Atheists in Foxholes
by mattmetzger
Summary: A planet breaks out into civil war, and Spock breaks off their relationship without explanation. All things considered, Jim's had better days. K/S with plot, swearing, masculinity and mud. Lots of mud.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes: This was a oneshot idea, that exploded into a full-on plot, that exploded into a full-on story. Manly sarcasm and mattmetzger-brand realism/cynicism abounds. Also, some of what is truly going on doesn't become apparent until the second and third chapters.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

* * *

><p>"There's my man," Jim crowed when Spock and Uhura joined the senior command crew at their regular table for dinner.<p>

"Spock?" Sulu snorted.

"Well, he better not mean _me_, 'Karu," Uhura pointed out, squeezing with that grace only women possess into the impossibly small space between Dr. McCoy and the helmsman.

"You're right, I don't," Jim smirked. "Spock, Admiralty sent new orders through - I'll need your input by Alpha shift tomorrow."

"Very well, Captain."

"Specifically, how we're meant to hop, skip and jump over to the Monaris system in the middle of an engine upgrade," Jim pulled a face. "Admiral Nogura's got his head so far up his ass..."

"Can we _not _discuss Nogura's ass at mealtimes?" Sulu put in.

"Oh thanks," Jim's face scrunched. "Urgh. Thanks a lot. Now I can't _not _think about it."

McCoy rolled his eyes, and said nothing. He had an edge over everyone else on the _ship_ in having roomed with Jim, and therefore also being immunised to his immature banter, and the images it produced. Instead, he reached over the tabletop and stole Spock's datapadd, placing it on the bench beside himself out of reach.

"No shop at the table," he said.

Spock was likewise immunised to the doctor's instructions (although that did not mean he _obeyed _them) after three years, and so merely carried on eating as though he had never been interrupted. After about two and a half minutes, Uhura casually reached around McCoy, took the padd herself, and passed it back.

"And to think I liked you," McCoy grumbled.

"Why?" she asked.

"Mostly because you've been puncturing Jim's ego for six years on the go without pause," he admitted.

He could not have gotten a better reaction if he'd written sonnets in flawless Andorian about her beauty - and really, to gang up on Kirk had become an unofficial game amongst the command crew, so perhaps it was the equivalent of calling her brilliant.

Jim often bemoaned it, but three years of being belittled, mocked and psychologically tortured at every turn by these razor-sharp, brilliant people was...fucking awesome, actually. Even if he was pretty sure they did have a ranking system that rivalled most professional football leagues.

Because even if they _did _make a sport out of taking him down a peg or six, they were also steadfastly loyal, absolutely fucking brilliant at what they did (with the _possible _exception of Sulu, who Jim swore steered them into asteroid belts just for the challenge of getting them out again) and made damn good friends when the situation called for it.

This was routine, now. To sit in the mess after Alpha shift, in the lull between the official shift and the hour of preparing for tomorrow's shift, and listen to the senior command crew cut each other to pieces over lasagne (McCoy) and unidentifiable stir fries (Sulu) and bowls of rice and spices that smelled like the street outside the Chinese takeout in Riverside (Uhura and Spock and sometimes Chekov, when he felt adventurous). Sometimes Scotty would tear himself away from the engines long enough to grab a meal, slap it between two sides of a ridiculously large baguette, and stutter out a conversation to Uhura, before vanishing back into the bowels of the ship and leaving the communications officer torn between amusement and sympathy. Sometimes McCoy and Uhura would argue, and Spock would watch, and sometimes the Commander and the doctor would argue, and Uhura would watch - and Jim would watch all three and snicker over his food and imagine the sorry lives of Captains who didn't have these people.

He had watched them grow and change. He had watched Chekov go from mute, terrified shyness to firing off questions in Spock's direction whenever the Science Officer came around. He had watched Sulu and Uhura glue themselves together like a duo against the world, and watched in horror when they turned that devious friendship against him. He watched with glee - always - when Bones and Spock fought ("Discussed, Jim.") and how the dynamics shifted when Uhura got involved. He had watched their very fabrics change - watched the fallout from the break-up of his science officer and his communications officer, and the disaster that had been the Sulu v McKenna war over the helm, and the gradual shift as Chekov went from that kid too young to have the job to that weird-accented maths nut that practically lived in the astrometrics lab.

They had routine - shifts, habits, plans - but they were always changing, and Jim never tired of watching them do it.

But watching forever was not an option, and as he eventually had to every evening, he pushed his tray to one side and slapped his thighs, preparing to stand.

"Well, children, I have to..."

"Look who's talking."

"..._go _and prepare for tomorrow like a _good _captain does," Jim spoke loudly over Sulu's scepticism. "Spock, drop by my quarters when you get an hour to run over those new orders with me. From the sound of it, Nogura's going to have a cow if we can't get to Monaris in five days."

"I'd like to see that," McCoy noted mildly, and Uhura shook her head in exasperation.

"I will do so, Captain," Spock said, ignoring the pair of them in favour of the returned datapadd - which Jim caught sight of McCoy stealing again as he returned his tray to the chutes.

God, he loved this job.

* * *

><p>"Enter," Jim called, hitting send on the final memo before twisting to see the doors of his cabin close behind his First Officer. "Hey," he grinned. "Pull up a chair, I'm nearly done."<p>

"I have reviewed the new orders," Spock said succinctly. "I estimate that if we shut down science labs fourteen through nineteen, we can provide the extra manpower to engineering to continue the upgrades without undue disturbance or impairment to the Monaris orders."

"Sounds like a plan," Jim nodded, taking the offered padd and scanning it quickly. "I'll run that by Scotty in the morning, see if he thinks we can do it. We can probably get inside their deadline at warp five, so as long as we can keep the girl running at those speeds..."

"That should not be too difficult; the primary upgrade is to the secondary thrusters, which can be locked offline up to warp six."

"Awesome," Jim grinned. "Then Nogura can go fuck himself."

He laughed at the look of faint distaste that swept across Spock's features, and rose from his chair to step around his desk.

"C'mere, you," he smirked, his tone laced with heavy affection, and he sank down straight into Spock's lap without shame, winding himself around the Vulcan's body like a trap and sucking deep, hard kisses into his mouth like a dying man in the desert finding water.

Nobody knew this part. Nobody knew this - how Jim could curl around him and taste the morning tea over paperwork. Nobody knew what their bare skin, side-by-side and intertwined, looked like in ship's lighting. Nobody knew that they had only ever played chess twice, and had never finished that second game, the pieces caught in limbo on the board in Jim's quarters.

Nobody knew - and nobody _would_.

Starfleet Command would not just have kittens, they'd have basketfuls. Each. It broke something like fourteen regulations, and that wasn't even factoring in the fact that the Interspecies Committee would probably have basketfuls of kittens too. Spock and Uhura had had to sit through enough interviews and reviews and judgemental decisions, and Jim being the highest-ranking member of the crew just made the paperwork breed like the aforementioned cats. In heat.

And on a ship of over four hundred people, they couldn't guarantee that someone wouldn't report the breach to the higher-ups. And then it would be over.

And so nobody knew. This place - under the dim lighting in Jim's sleeping space, where clothing was discouraged and sometimes, if Jim was really lucky, he got to see a small Vulcan smile and feel the skitter of thought from those alien fingers - was theirs. This was their place, and perhaps Vulcan children and Human children shared the importance of secrets - and neither Spock nor Jim had entirely grown out of keeping them.

This was theirs, and theirs alone, and waiting all day through paperwork and shift rotations and battle drills only made it worth it, when Jim's tunic and Spock's would mix in puddles on the deck, and they could breathe together on the bunk.

Nobody else.

* * *

><p>Jim woke with a snort, lurching his face out of his pillow before he suffocated, and rolled over, scratching idly at his balls. His sheets were on the floor, and he frowned sleepily before realising a) that he really should turn the screeching alarm off, and b) Spock hadn't reset the temperature controls before leaving last night. Probably as punishment for Jim dragging out that second orgasm for too long. Passive-aggressive, pissy Vulcan.<p>

"Alarm, off," Jim yawned, sliding from the bed and almost landing on the deck before his knees remembered how to function and he staggered to reset the thermostat. It was probaby just as well that they couldn't share quarters. He'd die of heatstroke actually sleeping with him as well as just sleeping with him.

It was all part of hiding, and Jim didn't really much mind. They couldn't share quarters because that was more or less taking out billboard space to announce it to the brass, and if any of the crew actually saw them coming out of each other's quarters in the morning - together - then the rumours would be just as effective as the billboard in the end.

Plus, really, their living patterns weren't too compatible. Spock came and went a lot - he worked funny shifts, because of the whole superVulcan thing, and Jim was too easy to wake up. And then there was the temperature difference, Jim's allergies to most Vulcan incense, Spock's need for absolute quiet when he meditated, and frankly, sleeping for two in a standard issue bunk was just downright impossible. (Jim knew; he'd tried enough times in the Academy.)

So he didn't mind too much, apart from when Spock committed those passive-aggressive acts of affectionate bitchiness. And then even, it just gave him an excuse for a longer shower.

Shaved, showered, dressed and awake, Jim was therefore almost ready when Scotty dropped by with his own view on their upcoming trip, and they walked to the briefing room together, heads lowered over Scotty's padds and projections until they entered the briefing to find that they were the last to arrive.

"Captain's prerogative," Jim cut in, before Uhura's eyebrow could do its full-on imitation of Spock's, and she rolled her eyes at him. "Morning, everyone. Have you all had your coffee?"

Several raised plastic cups and half-asleep grumbles were his reply, and he grinned. Command meetings were always held before Alpha shift, because Jim had learned from experience that they couldn't afford to hold them _during _shift because of the stress on the duty rota, and nobody (not even Spock) gave a rat's ass what was to be said _after _shift.

Plus, whatever else the replicators couldn't do, they put a shit-ton of caffeine in the coffee. (Probably to make up for the crap taste.)

"Okay, guys, the Monaris system," Jim said. "Apparently Monaris I and Monaris II have declared war on each other, without so much as a warning, and as they're both Federation members, we have to go and smooth things over."

"Who made the declaration?"

"Monaris I," Jim said, scrolling through a datapadd. "No reason was given in the formal announcement. They haven't informed the Federation or the 'Fleet at _all_; the Tellarite Ambassador on Monaris II was the one to keep us up to speed."

"Are they requesting assistance?" Spock asked.

"Nope," Jim shook his head. "Neither side is. If anything, we've been told to keep _out_, but as it's between two member races, we just can't do that. We're to negotiate with the government of Monaris I for an immediate ceasefire; the _Yorktown _is being ordered in to handle the government of Monaris II and she'll be joining us in the system a couple of days after we're scheduled to arrive."

"Wait, they've just kicked off into a war without any reason, without _telling _anyone, and want to do it all by themselves?" Sulu interrupted.

"It's _Monaris I_," Uhura said, then sighed when she received a table of blank looks. "Monaris I is divided into two major government zones, and the dominant one is a monarchy. It worked so well at keeping the peace that they were admitted membership - they're the only true monarchical government in the Federation. But ever since their current queen came to power, the government's actions have been completely erratic."

"Including war?" Jim prompted.

Uhura cocked her head. "I would have to look further into it, but there _have _been clashes between the minority and majority governments since her coronation, yes."

"Do it," Jim said. "And figure out who's next in line. If she's dragging them into wars with other Federation members, we may have to negotiate a change in leadership."

The atmosphere at the table dimmed. Negotiating anything was tiresome work, but changes in government were the most delicate, picky types of negotiation going. Nobody liked to be told by an outside party that they had to change the way they governed themselves, and more often than not, it provoked war in itself. On the other hand, Monaris I was not a _big _planet, nor an especially advanced one. They had only achieved warp in the last fifty years, and to declare war on the Federation would be an act of outright suicide.

"We're treating this initially like a tense diplomatic function. Lieutenant Uhura, I want you to compile the usual cultural program and have it ready within 48 hours. Commander Spock, I want you to assemble a diplomatic team, and Lieutenant Giotto, you supply the Commander with the security personnel he requests," Jim said briskly. "Nobody wants open war, so we have five days to prepare and then we'll be working seventy-two hour shifts again until this is sorted."

"I suppose you'll be leading the negotiations?" Dr. McCoy finally spoke over the top of his own clenched fist.

"Yes," Jim said flatly.

There was a pause, then the doctor nodded. "In which case, you'll need your immunity boosters and your antihistamines upgraded. I don't know a lot about the Monaris system, but I can tell you that place has a shit-ton of grass."

Uhura hid a smile, and Jim smirked, grateful that the doctor hadn't opted to fight him on this one.

"Will do, Bones. Alright, people. Finish up your coffee and get to your stations. We have stars to warp past."

* * *

><p>Upon stepping into Sickbay, Spock's initial impression was that it was quiet.<p>

"_Touch me with that hypo and I'll punch your lights out_!"

Or perhaps not.

Jim shot out of McCoy's office, rubbing his neck and scowling, and darted behind Spock before even giving him a greeting. A moment later, McCoy stalked into the main bay, smirking unpleasantly and holding a particularly large hypospray aloft.

"Just one more," he said.

"No! No more!" Jim hissed. "Spock, protect me."

"From a routine vaccination?"

"_Yes_."

"He's not going to do that," McCoy said, and when Spock's hand closed around Jim's upper arm, the captain groaned theatrically.

"I'll have you both court-martia - _ow_!" he howled, and McCoy stepped back.

"Thank you, Commander," he said pleasantly, tossing the disposal needle into the sharps canister and dropping the rest of the spray into a decontamination bucket.

"I hate you both," Jim groused.

"Perhaps between nursing your injuries and expressing your negatives feelings about necessary procedures, you could sign this?" Spock asked, handing over a padd of requisition forms.

"You get more sarcastic every day, Spock," McCoy drawled as Jim hunched over the padd and began scrawling signature after signature.

"It is the price one pays for working in a predominantly Human environment."

"Socialisation?"

"Contamination."

Jim snickered openly as he handed the padd back. "Am I needed up on the bridge yet?"

"Not at present; we will not arrive at Monaris I until 1700 hours tomorrow, and most of the command crew are studying Lieutenant Uhura's cultural portfolio on the Monarians."

"Well, that should take you about thirty seconds," McCoy drawled.

"Indeed, doctor. I am working through the Captain's paperwork in an attempt to bring him at least within a month of current requirements."

"Hey, I'm not _that _bad," Jim groused.

"Yeah, Jim, you really are," McCoy grunted.

"If you will excuse me, gentlemen."

And then it happened - a quite ordinary exchange changed, as the doors slid shut behind Spock's heel and he distinctly heard the doctor's, "I'll never know what you see in him."

Spock...paused.

"What I see in him?" Jim asked.

"Come off it, Jim, if he wasn't Vulcan, you'd have made a drunk pass at him at a Christmas party by now."

Spock's eyebrow twitched; luckily, there was nobody in the corridor to see it. Jim _had _made a drunk pass at him one Christmas - it had been, however, in the privacy of Jim's quarters and therefore not witnessed by any third party.

Jim snorted. "No I wouldn't."

Spock cocked his head. But he _had_. And he _knew_ he had.

"Uh-huh."

"No, I _wouldn't_," Jim stressed, and snorted again. "Come off it, Bones. He's _Spock_. I just _wouldn't_."

"Wouldn't sleep with him, or do it drunk?"

"_Both_. Jesus, my self-preservation instinct's not _that _bad."

McCoy snorted, and Spock came back to himself. He was stood in the hallway, _eavesdropping_, and yet couldn't find the inclination to be ashamed of it in light of what he had just heard. Namely, Jim denying their relationship to McCoy, and moreover, denying that it was even _possible_.

_Why?_

* * *

><p>It was not until after shift that Spock had time to process what he had heard, and he found himself changing into his meditation robes in his quarters without much memory, over the confusing wash of emotion, of what his shift had actually contained for the remainder of the afternoon. He folded himself into a corner of his quarters, taking unnecessary time in finding a comfortable position, and reflecting coldly that the time-wasting was simply another manifested symptom of his distress - and yes, distress. He would admit that, if only to himself. He was distressed.<p>

While Spock was remarkably promiscuous for a Vulcan - having had a total of three romantic and sexual partners thus far - he had not once entered a relationship without a view to its long-term sustainability. When it had become clear that he and Nyota would not be able to conform enough to each other's requirements to sustain a permanent relationship, he had terminated it. (She had not been pleased with him for a long time, but that was beside the point.)

He had himself been, at the time, somewhat negatively affected to realise that their relationship was not viable (which in itself was odd, compared to his minute relief at having been freed from his betrothal to T'Pring).

This, however, was not 'somewhat negatively affected.' This - the swirling confusing of emotion lurking in his synapses and threatening to overwhelm his control - was far beyond mere upset. He was actively distressed by what he had heard, and the application of logic...

Logically, he would not have been surprised or disheartened to hear Jim making the same denial to a mere colleague. They had to keep their acquaintance secret, after all, and to broadcast it to every passing crewmember would ensure that the admiralty heard of it within days and put a stop to it. To hear Jim making the same denial to a crewmember at random would be meaningless; Spock would barely think about it.

But it had not been a random crewmember. _It had been Dr. Leonard McCoy_.

McCoy and Jim were, to use the Human vernacular, best friends. There was extremely little - if anything - that McCoy did not know about Jim Kirk, and vice versa. Spock knew for a fact that McCoy's young daughter referred to Jim as an uncle, despite any lack of genetic relation, and Jim carried a hatred for Jocelyn Davis as powerful as if _he _had been the one to divorce her. If anyone on board exercised the same amount of influence over Jim that Spock did, then it had to be Leonard McCoy.

Simply put: Spock had thought he'd _known_.

At the very least, if McCoy did not know, why had Jim not only kept it from him, but openly denied it?

The first option was that he was extending his policy of secret-keeping to even those that he trusted - and yet that seemed to be at odds with not only how Jim and McCoy related to one another, but how Jim trusted McCoy already with things that he should not know. Spock _knew _that Jim had told McCoy about the contents of files for the captain's eyes only - he was not in the game of keeping secrets, whether he should or not, from McCoy. He _did _trust McCoy to keep those secrets - even Spock trusted him to keep them, and he didn't particularly like the man in the first place.

Therefore, Jim was not keeping it a secret out of the desire not to get caught.

Which was in itself the only reason that Spock knew of that they had kept it secret in the first place.

Other options, applied to Humans in general, suggested themselves as Spock ran over the problem in his head. The first that presented itself was a natural reluctance: Nyota had never been in the game of broadcasting her own relationships, with Spock or anyone else. She believed that it was nobody else's business, and had never felt the urge to tell anyone that she was involved at all, never mind with whom. But this was not true in Jim's case: he often spoke of previous conquests to both Spock and the rest of the crew. It was common knowledge that he had nearly married another cadet, Carol, at the Academy, and the entire third-year war between Cadet Kirk and Cadet Finnegan had been because of a girl named Ruth.

Another option was that McCoy harboured some negative ideas about their arrangement that Jim wished to avoid - namely, that he was either homophobic or xenophobic, and would object to Jim's involvement with either another male, or an alien. And while Spock could forsee perhaps that McCoy would not be impressed at Jim being involved with _him_, he could not attribute homophobia (in fact, certainly could not, considering the shadowy rumour of a mysterious Paul that McCoy had apparently dated in the Academy) or xenophobia to the doctor.

Even if he _was _xenophobic, why would it stop Jim? Jim had never been in the act of letting the opinions of others dictate his own actions, and had clashed with the doctor repeatedly over differences of opinion without giving way. It simply did not seem likely.

Two final options coalesced in Spock's mind, and neither particularly attractive.

Jim was deliberately hiding it from McCoy, and in the absence of any kinder option, was either ashamed of their relationship, or viewed it not as a relationship at all. Either he wished to keep Spock a secret from all and sundry - _dirty little secret_, the Human phrase - or he viewed Spock as nothing more than a way to pass the time and sexual frustration.

Spock tensed, and opened his eyes.

Meditation would not come easily tonight.

* * *

><p>"We will arrive at Monaris I in roughly half an hour, at which point Mr. Spock, Lieutenant Uhura and myself will beam down with a security team and begin negotiations with this crazy queen of theirs. Sulu will have command in light of the ongoing engine upgrades requiring Scotty's time and attention," Jim surmised, sitting back in his chair. "Any questions?"<p>

He was met with silence.

"Alright. Dismissed. Commander Spock, a word please?"

Jim waited until the last man had left before pushing his chair back and frowned across at Spock.

"Are you okay?"

"Quite well, Captain."

"Really?" he pushed.

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"You didn't come by last night."

Of course he had not. Spock was not used to experiencing strong emotions, but they were not _so _alien that he did not know the, frankly, idiotic ways of dealing with them. Overexposure to the cause would only serve to exacerbate things, and as it was, Spock had taken most of the night to think the matter over, unable to reach any firm conclusion.

"Spock?" Jim prompted, nudging his boot with his own under the table. "Is everything okay?"

Spock took a breath. "Negative."

"What's up?" Jim coaxed. His face, when Spock glanced up to observe it, kept shifting between his professional mask and anxiety, unsure which path to take until he heard the problem.

_"He's Spock. I just wouldn't."_

"I am terminating our arrangement."

Words did not hurt. That was simply illogical Human fancy, but the sudden sharp twist to Jim's features made Spock wonder, just for a moment, if Humans did possess some physical response to words in such a manner.

"What."

It was not a question, exactly. Jim's voice was quiet, flat and - dangerous.

"Computer, engage soundproof barriers on Briefing Room One."

_"Soundproofing enabled."_

"Explain. _Now_."

"It has come to my attention that our arrangement is unsustainable in the long term and generally unwise to pursue any longer. As such, I am terminating it, effective immediately."

"_Explain_."

"I have provided..."

"You just provided _jack_," Jim snapped, fists clenching on the tabletop. "That was Vulcan buzzwording _bullshit _and you know it. Tell. Me. _Why_!"

Spock stiffened, rising from his seat and folding his hands behind his back. Jim rose too, something a lot like fury written into his face.

"It is unwise to continue."

"Okay, great, got that," Jim snapped, waving it aside. "What _brought this to your attention _then? What woke you up to _that _stunning little fact, because I gotta say it, Spock, _I know_. We _knew_ right from the off it was a crap idea but we did it anyway _so why now_?"

"I do not see the need to discuss this further."

"Like hell we're not discussing this further. You think I'm just going to let you toss me aside like a used paper towel the minute you're done? Well, think a-fucking-gain."

"There is nothing to say," Spock said icily, irrationally _angry _at Jim accusing him of exactly what Jim himself was doing. "It is unwise to continue with our acquaintance, and to do so will only result in further negativity in the future..."

"As opposed to now?"

"...therefore I am terminating it."

"And I don't get a say in this _at all_?"

"It is what you _said _that brought the problem to my attention!" Spock outright snapped, and took a step back, furious with himself for having lost control for that short, short moment.

"What I _said_? When? What _the fuck _did I say to..."

The communications console on the table whistled. _"Bridge to Captain Kirk, we're approaching orbital distance of Monaris I and are being hailed by the majority government."_

Uhura's smooth, calm voice - blissfully unaware of the tension she had just ruptured - sliced through the anger in the room, and Jim's jaw worked angrily for a moment before he inhaled deeply through his nose and visibly backed down.

"We have work to do," he said quietly. "But the minute we're off duty again, you _will _explain where the _hell _this has just come from."

Spock felt his face tighten almost involuntarily.

"Because if you think I'm just giving you up because you've got some crazy Vulcan whim going on in there, then you're sadly fucking mistaken," Jim snapped, and swept from the room as though it were on fire.

Spock remained a moment longer, pushing down and locking in his own irrational anger - and hurt, distinct _hurt _that he had not expected - before following.

* * *

><p>The atmosphere was frosty when the diplomatic party assembled. Jim Kirk was radiating anger and tension, and Spock nothing at all, and the security personnel shifted uneasily at the atmosphere as they gathered on the transporter pad. Uhura, never one to miss a thing, flicked her gaze between Jim and Spock repeatedly, and moments before transport, shifted a hair to the left.<p>

Closer to Jim.

The moment the thick, spongy grass of Monaris I materialised under their feet, however, Jim's smile and charm were back in place for their welcoming party - although their equally icy expressions did not suggest welcome - and the personal crisis was promptly pushed to the side.

"Captain Kirk, of the _USS Enterprise_," Jim introduced himself, saluting in the Monarian fashion, and bowed respectfully to the tiny female at the centre of the welcoming party, her shortness in stature only exaggerated by her very tall hat.

Monarians were not an attractive species. Vaguely humanoid, they seemed generally fairly grotesque simply because everything was ridiculously out of proportion by both Vulcan and Human standards. Their heads were too small, reminiscient of golf balls on sticks, and their necks bobbed and weaved like Andorian antennae, but without the purpose. Their arms were short and muscular, even on the women, and their legs too short for their long torsos, and often different lengths in themselves, forcing them into a strange rocking gate like a monkey trying to run fully upright. Their skin was a dark, blotchy brown, and their eyes a variety of colours but invariably so pale as to be slightly creepy - and their golf ball heads were not helped by the fact they were all _entirely _bald.

And when they smiled - as the tiny queen did for Jim - they showed off mouthfuls of crooked teeth that reminded the diplomatic party uneasily of rodents. Of the vermin variety.

"Greetings, Capt-ayne," she said, her voice high and shrill, like a blackbird being strangled. "I extend welcome, but your Federation weaponry is not required here."

Her Standard was formal and flawless, but very oddly accented, and the shrill tones of her voice made it almost painful to listen to.

"We hope not to need our weaponry," Jim said. "I'm sure we can come to some form of agreement without having to add weaponry to the terms."

"I doubt it," she said flatly. "Come. We have prepared a conference."

Monaris I had two moons which interfered with Starfleet technology to varying degrees. As such, both planets had a rendezvous point equipped with heavy, industrial signal boosters, and this circle of efficiency was where they beamed down, surrounded by a tiny cluster of government buildings and rolling, grassy hills, and nothing much else. Now, the queen and her silent entourage took them from the centre of the massive circle to one side of it, protected from the weak Monarian sunlight by flimsy trees and thicker, spongier grass.

She sank into a chair, and Jim wondered if she was very old and he simply couldn't tell, and gestured for her guards to step back a little.

"I will keep this short," she trilled. "I do not wish Federation interference. Our affairs are our own."

"Not as a member race," Jim corrected gently. "It is in the membership contracts - you simply can't attack other members without the Federation - and the fleet - intervening. We are meant to be on the same side."

"We are merely retrieving our wayward colony. There are no two sides," she said gravely - and dreamily, almost. Jim decided that she probably was very old.

"A formal declaration of war was made, and - Lieutenant Uhura, when was Monaris II declared independent?"

"2214, sir."

"Thank you. They are, under Federation law, no longer a colony, and this is war."

"This is - _silence_!" she snarled suddenly, her voice squeaking and disappearing altogether as a bell clanged loudly in the surrounding buildings, not fifty metres (judging by the way the air _shivered _from their current position).

Jim would not have been alarmed but for the way the Monarian guards were suddenly handling their weapons.

"Security alert," he snapped, stepping back from the queen's chair. "What is that alarm?"

"Alarm, alarm," she squeaked, and shrilled unhappily. "The rebels - minority scum, westerners - they raid and pillage and call themselves heroes. They come for you, Capt-ayne."

The security team clustered tighter, and suddenly the impenetrable wall of force of a fully-grown Vulcan was at Jim's back.

"For me?"

"The Federation. We do not like the Federation interference," she trilled, almost sleepily, and then shot up from her chair with a shriek when the bell clanged louder and shadows began to cross into the open space of the rendezvous point. "Shoot them! Shoot them all!"

"Down!" Jim roared, as the first shot zipped past over his head, ruffling his hair.

The team hit the ground, and Jim was fumbling for his communicator when the tiny queen screamed - a horrific, grating squeal, like nails on a blackboard, that had every hair on his body standing on end and rattled his brain as surely as if he'd been shaken.

The shriek died away - and there was a gun in the small of Jim's back.

"Up."

The command was delivered in a similarly high, unpleasant voice, but the accent was heavier and Jim instinctly realised that the command of Standard was worse. Still, he wasn't one to argue with a gun in his back, and the party rose back to their feet to find themselves surrounded - partly by the guard of the queen, hovering back under the shade of the flimsy trees, and partly by a new group of paler-skinned Monarians with clothing that resembled that bought off the Orion black market.

The closest - with the gun in Jim's back - exploded into a chatter, like a hedgerow of birds, and Uhura cocked her head.

"He claims to be the leader of the First Resistance," she said.

"And they are?"

"I've never heard of them," she blinked, nonplussed. "He is..."

The leader - if that's what he was - turned those pale eyes on the assembled officers, and jerked his firearm in Jim's direction.

"You," he rasped. "And Vel-kin."

Presumably that was supposed to mean Vulcan, and Jim and Spock exchanged a swift glance before slowly stepping away from the rest of the group. The leader eyed them almost suspiciously for a moment, before looking back to Lieutenant Uhura and the security team, and homing in on her.

"You. Fi-mayul?"

"_Ik'tenash_," she supplied warily, and Jim watched in muted admiration as, despite the sudden tension radiating off the security officers as the rebel leader approached her, Uhura merely stood her ground and stared right back at him.

"You take mah-sedge," he insisted. "We tayuk your leaders - insurayance."

"Oh, _great_," Jim muttered under his breath. Hostage situations - his _favourite_.

And then everything just got a lot worse when that heavy firearm swung around and - perhaps fired was not the right word, at the muffled, dull thump that it emitted when the Monarian pulled the trigger, but Lieutenant Luciani's sudden gurgle before his eyes rolled back in his head and collapsed said it all.

"_Stop it_!" Jim roared, but too late - the firearm thumped four times, and each of his security team sustained a large, bloody hole to the chest before collapsing without fanfare.

"One needed for mah-sedge," the leader intoned gravely, holstering the firearm again. "Fi-mayul go. Leaders - with we."

"Sir?" Uhura said, still not taking her eyes off the Monarian.

"Do it, Lieutenant," Jim said flatly. "Get a message to Command telling them what's happened here. Find out why we weren't properly informed about the situation, _especially _that queen of theirs. And go to level two."

She stiffened and nodded. "Yes, _sir_."

Level two. War scenario.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes: ****Still on this all-nighter. Comatose with boredom over declining voter turnout. LJ isn't functioning properly for the ninety-eighth time. Therefore: update.**

* * *

><p>The first thing that Jim noticed was that these...insurgents were poorly organised.<p>

They were not _soldiers_. They were armed, certainly, but they were disorganised, milling around their captives and chattering away in a very undisciplined manner. No threats were exchanged, and even when they were poked into walking with that traditional prod-in-the-back, the rebels keep reaching out to touch their hair, apparently as fascinated by it as the queen had been.

They also made no attempt to stop either of them from observing the surroundings. They were walked (definitely not marched) from the capitol and into the surrounding marshy grasslands, away from the fires in the town and the stink of burning flesh. They were not blindfolded or cuffed, and only the heavy presence of weaponry that he didn't recognise kept Jim from making a run for it.

"Phasers?" he asked, and Spock shook his head.

"The power source is too large," was the clipped explanation, and Jim grimaced. So something more heavy-duty than a phaser, and more likely to kill if discharged. Wonderful.

They walked in an almost awkward silence towards the setting sun and its inky lines in the sky, and were prodded up a sharp incline and along a ridge until they came, only forty minutes after the anticlimatic capture, to a camp.

There was no other word for it. The shelters were fabric held up on sticks and poles, and open fires burned in pits around the edges. Guards, slouching against the rocks, eyed them in bored curiosity, some even neglecting to look their way as they were led deeper into the camp, and to the only solid structure there.

It was a house.

There was no other description for it: it was a small dwelling with cut windows and a shaky door that had obviously once been a domestic dwelling. Mounds by the door suggested what had happened to its previous owners, but the furniture remained, and they were drawn into a dark room with two narrow (ridiculously narrow, as in a foot across) beds and, of all things, chains on the walls.

"This is like a crap horror movie," Jim muttered, but mostly to himself.

Not a word was actually exchanged: a modicum of intelligence was shown in that they were actually cuffed to the chains on the walls, but then the insurgents backed out of the room entirely and locked the door behind them without a sound.

And that was that.

"So...what now?" Jim asked.

Spock said nothing, eyeing the window as if calculating something. Which he probably was.

"Are we hostages, or are they going to execute us, or...?"

"I doubt that the majority of these," Spock paused, his lip twitching as if he wanted to sneer, "guards have the constitution for murder. They were unhappy to restrain us. The only one among them who seems to have such a constitution is their leader."

"So, what, this is some half-baked plan by half-baked rebel on a power trip?" Jim snorted. "Way to run a rebellion."

"Indeed."

"Oi," Jim stretched out a leg and bumped Spock's boot with his own. "You actually going to talk to me about whatever crawled up your ass and died?"

Spock gave him a very dark look and said, "We are on duty."

"Uh-huh, and nobody else is around, _and _they don't seem able to talk to us, _and _we can't escape until nightfall anyway. It's too busy out there," Jim countered flatly. "So talk."

"What is it that you wish to hear?"

"A _reason_," Jim snarled. "You just up and dumped me without a goddamn reason, and fuck that shit. We have it good, and if you think I'm just going to crawl off and lick my wounds, then you're sadly fucking mistaken."

"I believe that I made myself clear."

"Oh yeah, the breaking up part? Crystal. Got that. Why? Not a fucking word. So _talk to me_. Tell me why."

Spock looked downright annoyed now, and some tiny part of Jim's mind noted that the chains and the distance were probably awesome for his health right about now.

"Come on, Spock," Jim's tone dropped. "Just talk to me."

"I informed you as to my reasoning."

"No you didn't, you just said it wasn't a good idea. Well, _yeah_," Jim rolled his eyes. "We knew it wasn't a good idea from the start, but we did it anyway. What's changed? 'Cause here I am thinking we're doing just great and my life is pretty much everything I want it to be, and then you turn around and break it off without a freaking _word_."

"I saw no reason to break with tradition," Spock - snapped, there was no other term for it, and Jim's face twisted.

"You what?" he retorted.

Spock said nothing.

"Break with tradition? What tradition? Of not talking?" Jim guessed.

"Of not talking to one another, perhaps," Spock corrected.

"Alr-_ight_," Jim said heavily. "So I'm guessing you think I'm keeping something from you?"

"I happen to have been made rather aware of that, yes," Spock's voice had gone beyond icy and into sub-arctic, but Jim Kirk had always been a stupid son of a bitch at recognising lines that he shouldn't cross, and so rather cheerfully kept heading for it.

"Okay, let's see...I'm not cheating on you, not bitching about you behind your back, not using you, and you're not my rebound guy - don't ask," he pre-empted the question. "I don't have some secret wife and kid, and neither do you, far as I know, and I'm not itching for a threesome with Uhura, except maybe in the odd three-in-the-morning dream, which you can't possibly blame me for. So what is it?"

A faint scratching noise made Jim pause for a moment, before he realised that Spock was, quite literally, grinding his teeth.

"_Talk to me_," he insisted.

Instead of speaking, Spock drew his feet up to his hips onto the bed - and out of Jim's reach - and folded them in a pose Jim recognised.

"Oh no, you don't _meditate _your way out of this one!" he snarled.

Either he could, or he was simply ignoring Jim, because those dark eyes closed and he disappeared from the room.

* * *

><p>By the time their captors (to use the term loosely) returned, Jim was seething.<p>

He didn't know how long it had been - just that the light peeking through the cracks in the damp-rotten ceiling was fading towards something approaching darkness - and he didn't much care. It was past the end of his normal shift, because his stomach was letting itself be heard, and the shackles on his chains were unpleasantly chilly and felt slightly fuzzy, as though they were mouldy. And really, he could do without Bones pitching a fit over weird alien bugs when he got back.

The man calmly meditating (fuck that, _ignoring _him) on the other side of the room was irritating enough right now, thank you very much.

Most people - Jim included - didn't truly appreciate the effort that had to go into ignoring people until they saw a Vulcan do it. And Vulcans could _ignore _you. They could behave consistently and perfectly as though there was nobody else on the entire planet but themselves, and do it all effortlessly as well. If they didn't want to acknowledge you, it took inflicting bodily harm to break the wall, and even that wasn't a total guarantee.

And being out of reach, wasn't really an option anyway.

But Spock was an officer, despite whatever Jim had done to get his superior Vulcan knickers in a twist, and those dark eyes cracked at the seams again when the door shuddered until the unpleasant squeal of a rusty key, and two hideously ugly Monarian guards entered, bracketing the rebel leader that had shrieked and ruffled at the queen God-knew-how-many hours earlier.

"Capt-ayne," the leader bowed roughly to Jim, almost falling off his uneven legs, and the guards chittered uncomfortably behind him.

"Finally," Jim said. "I don't know what guest quarters you call these, but these are _not _the diplomatic quarters."

The leader blinked.

"I do not believe his grasp of Standard is sufficient to comprehend sarcasm," Spock intoned.

"Oh, _now _you're awake," Jim sniped - and the leader had to understand something, as he glanced between them despite the fact that neither officer had looked at the other in their sharp exchange.

"I have not been unconscious or asleep."

"Just ignoring me."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jim noticed Spock's face tighten slightly.

"So, you gonna tell me?" Jim demanded, turning to stare belligerently at Spock. The Monarians had apparently given up whatever idea they had had by entering, and were watching the exchange with open, chittering fascination.

"Tell you _what_, Captain?"

"Don't you Captain me," Jim snapped. "You gonna tell me what the fuck I did?"

Spock's face shuttered completely. "This is not an appropriate time and place to discuss..."

"Fuck that," Jim said shortly. "They're not talking, and even if they were, they're incompetent enough I could hazard a guess. So how about we use this time properly, now you're done with your snit. What the fuck did I do?"

The guards chittered at his tone - presumably, anyway - and the trio shifted uncomfortably. The rebel leader was beginning to puff up like an indignant dignitary. Perhaps he, too, didn't like being ignored.

"I'm not dropping it," Jim said flatly. "So you can tell me, or I can bug you all fuckin' night until somebody figures out a way to get us out of here."

Spock's shoulders almost rolled, and Jim's instincts and training followed the movement to his hands, almost entirely hidden behind his back. His thumbs were rolling inwards, and his fingers working at the left as if to...Jim grasped the idea and began to copy, never breaking his persistent line of questioning.

"You don't do anything without a damn good reason, Spock, and I want to fucking hear it, so..."

"Vulcans are not in the habit of forming casual arrangements."

He almost..._blurted _it out, and Jim paused for a moment to process both the actual words and the shocking flood of sharp consonants and throaty vowels - strongly-accented, almost, as though this was how Spock had sounded speaking Standard in a Vulcan environment.

"Casual arrangements."

Spock said nothing.

"Now _why_," Jim demanded slowly, "would you feel the need to tell me that?"

Spock said nothing; his shoulders twitched slightly, but nothing crossed his face.

"You dumped me because it was a casual arrangement?" Jim asked suspiciously. "But then you wouldn't have entered into it in the first place, so - why? Why did you suddenly go from being pretty damn sure about this thing, to thinking it was some casual fling and calling it off?"

One of the guards chittered something that might have been an attempt at echoing the word 'fling', and the leader make a noise like a growling chipmunk. That was to say, not a very threatening noise at all.

"Capt-ayne, we must spe-yak."

"In a second," Jim growled, narrowing his eyes at Spock. "_What changed your mind_?"

"We must spe-yak _now_."

"I said _in a second_!" Jim snarled. "Spock!"

"I..." Spock paused, jaw working. His shoulders twitched again, and the officer in Jim relaxed minutely. "...overheard you speaking with Dr. McCoy. He...enquired as to your...interest..."

Jim's brain jolted as it caught up with Spock's own thought processes. All of the command crew knew that Jim carried a not-so-subtle torch for his XO, and for the first time, Bones had gritted his teeth and outright asked about it. And Jim had known _why_, he'd been one step ahead of Bones about it, and he'd just passed it off, said that he would never...

That he would never.

"You dumped me," he said slowly, "because you overheard me telling Bones I'd never fuck you?"

Spock's jaw twitched sideways; he was _beyond _angry, and Jim knew damn well that he was pushing this too far, considering...

The Monarian leader lost his patience, and made a critical mistake, stepping behind them and bringing up a misshapen hand to, presumably, strike Jim across the face and shut him up.

Only for Spock to draw his foot to his hip, and _kick_, powerful Vulcan muscles executing a well-aimed blow with the heel to the side of the fragile, golf-ball head and snap it sideways, those eerie eyes going blank in a second and the body of the rebel leader tumbling to the floor.

And then any estimations Jim had of the competence of their hosts hit the floor along with him, for the guards - far from retreating, calling for assistance, or locating weaponry, they stepped within range of an alien that had just proven not only his willingness to kick another being into unconsciousness, but his easy ability to do so.

In a fluid motion, he brought his freshly-freed hands up to either side of the guards' heads, and clapped their skulls together.

Jim winced at the crack, and nodded to the door.

"Close it, before anyone out there realises what you just did," he snapped. "How are your thumbs?"

The dislocated - for that was how he had slipped free of the cuffs - digits twitched oddly from their sockets, but Spock displayed no discomfort as he slid the door closed and propped it thus with a single guard's body.

"Alright. Put your thumbs back in, and get these off me," Jim snapped. "And what the _fuck_, by the way? You heard me denying it to Bones, so you dumped me?"

"I am aware," Spock said calmly, snapping his thumbs back into place with a sickening crack and looking bored by the process, "that we kept our arrangement quiet from the crew, but I saw no logical reason for you - or I - to do so with regards to the doctor."

"Well, no, you..."

"If, then, you wished to openly deny not only the fact, but the _possibility _of the fact, to the doctor, I was forced to conclude that either you were..." Spock paused, then carried on in a rush, as though Jim's line of questioning had burst a dam, "ashamed of our association, or not as...invested."

Jim groaned as the cuffs clacked open, and rubbed his wrists. "Alright. So, you thought because I denied it to Bones, it's just a stupid fling to me?"

"...Indeed."

"Well, then, you're a fucking idiot," Jim snarled, bending to haul the unconscious leader up onto the bed and snap the cuffs around his wrists instead. "Here's what I don't think you know - there's a bet."

"A...bet?"

"Yeah. On me. Kinda," Jim grimaced. "See, _we _might be secret, but the fact that I _wanna _bang you really, _really _isn't. And there's a bet on when I'm going to fuck decorum, fuck regulations, and fuck _you_."

"A bet."

"_Yeah_," Jim snapped. "And guess what? Bones' window is coming up. When I heard about it, I thought - hey, you know what? If I keep it under wraps from the senior crew until Bones wins the illegal alcohol I _totally _don't know about, then he'll be obliged to treat me for doing it when it suits _him_. Nobody ever needed to find out - especially not that I _know _about their _also _illegal betting scam. Which is why, I'm willing to bet, that _you _didn't know."

Spock had gone very, very still. His eyes were pits in the faint glimmer of moonlight seeping through the ceiling cracks.

"So instead of fucking _dumping _me, how about you actually _talk _to me, you stupid son of a bitch," Jim snapped, not quite daring to reach out and smack him one in case Spock smacked back. "Maybe _next _time, you won't go thinking that _I'm _just thinking with my dick on this one, huh?"

"I...did not..."

"Yeah, you didn't know," Jim sighed heavily. "And that right there is a problem. But not _now_. We have to get out of here, and then you and me? We're going to have a _long _fucking talk."

* * *

><p>Escaping from the random house was...<p>

Well. It was fucking _hard_, actually.

For a start, while getting _out _of the house wasn't hard - nobody had, apparently, heard the brief scuffle or the argument, _or _noticed the absence of their leader - it _was _surrounded by little pools of lit tents like some weird summer camp back home. _Loads _of tents. And by many of them were, propped up on tent poles and equipment bags, the heavy rifles that had been thumping off in the tiny capitol.

They slipped, silent and unnoticed, three-quarters from the camp before the cry went up and Jim ducked in time to feel some of his hair get torn away by whatever projectile the guns fired.

And then...

Monarians were noisy. They _ran_, when the explosion of noise came from that single, indignant shriek, and a moment later it sounded like...well, if Hell were populated with blackbirds and angry chickens instead of crows, that would be the noise. But Jim couldn't find it in him to be annoyed - they were being shot at, and Monarians were on a par with humans in land speed terms, and frankly, in the dark, Jim didn't have _much _clue over where he was going.

Spock, with slightly superior vision, did.

It was Spock that guided Jim, though repeated silent yanks on his sleeves, into the muddy filth of the long grass on the ridge-top, the wet sludge splashing up to his knees and sucking at his boots, but allowing them, just about, to keep running. It was Spock that brought them back to the spray of rocky dirt and muddy marsh that marked the area of that empty road from the capitol, and it was Spock who jerked Jim bodily from the path of more than one projectile as they squished and splattered their way to the beginnings of the decline into the valley.

And it was Spock, when the thumps began to die back, who hit the earth and began to crawl.

The grass was long enough to hide them, and Jim fell after him, the spiky tendrils closing over their bodies. But bellying in the mud was harder than it looked, and even service-primed muscles protested at the awkward position. It was working - the chattering exploded in the distance, and the thumps of fire ceased as their pursuers lost sight of them, but the ache in Jim's muscles and Spock's laboured breathing at his side suggested that unless they could find an alternative soon, they would - _there_.

Just as Jim thought his limbs were going to explode from the stressful position, he caught sight of it - a narrow, yawning gap in the overhang of rocks that looked like it lead to a ditch. He didn't speak, merely tugging on Spock's filthy sleeve to pull him in the right direction and hoping that the natives didn't notice the change of direction in the grass-path.

The grass was remarkably springy, though, and when Jim squirmed down into the hole, it bounced back briefly before Spock followed.

And _man_, missions liked to give Jim a hard time.

The hole was more of a natural ditch - perhaps a stream, judging by the amount of ridiculously wet mud - that ran long and thin like a smeary gash in the earth. It was about nine or ten feet long, allowing them to squirm backwards and well out of sight, but offered no real escape route.

"Foxhole," Jim muttered, and snickered to himself.

It _was_, except for the lack of foxes. If this world had foxes. But it was small, narrow, and led to the two of them being forced to press tightly together in order to fit. But for all the residual irritation, it might have been (freezing mud aside) fairly cosy.

They stayed put, silent and almost breathing each other's air, while footsteps thundered about on the ridge, alien voices squawking (Jim imagined indignantly at losing them) but, mercifully, beginning to head away from their hiding place.

They had gotten away with it, and when the world above fell silent, Jim let out a long, shaking breath.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered. "Jesus fucking Christ on a stick. That was close."

"Indeed."

"Your voice is about the only damn dry thing in here," Jim grumbled. "This is disgusting. We're going to get back looking like we've been mud-wrestling on Risa."

He twisted to peer up at the dark mouth of the hole, and in doing so, laid an arm over Spock's ribs. He felt the clench and rolled his eyes.

"I know I'm hardly your favourite person right now, but for Christ's sake..."

Spock said nothing, and Jim scowled down at where he imagined his face to be.

"What, no cutting remark?"

"No."

_That_, more than anything, set off alarm bells. Spock never acknowledged his acidic tongue and dry manner of handling idiotic behaviour. He just _didn't_. And not only was that an acknowledgement that the behaviour existed, but he wasn't berating Jim for being illogical or irritable or whatever.

"That's it? Just _no_?"

"W..."

"_Report_, Commander," Jim snarled, shifting to reach for his utility belt and the torch on it - and as he did, he felt it.

There was a patch on Spock's tunic, along his side over the ribs, that was not just wet but _warm_. The mud was drenching the both of them, yes, but it was freezing. They both were - apart from that one warm patch.

"I was shot approximately seven minutes ago."

So before they hit the earth and crawled. Hell, maybe that was _why _he'd hit the earth and crawled. _Fuck_.

"You son of a bitch!" Jim cursed, fumbling for his torch with one hand and the bottom of Spock's tunic and undershirt with the other. "You just don't fucking _talk _to me, do you, Spock? Not about what I said to Bones, not about your concerns with our arrangement, and not about _this_."

The sudden glare of the torch, when he found it, was shocking, and he wasn't sure whether it was his own imagination or the darkness of their surroundings or _real_, but Spock's face was paper-white in the gleam. His tunic was so liberally drenched in filth - as was Jim's - that there was no visible evidence of that warm patch, but when Jim mercilessly tore his shirts up to his armpits, there it was.

_Fucking hell_, there it was.

Jim had been expecting a bullet - phaser wounds didn't lend themselves to bleeding - but here was definitive proof that the Monarians had been paying for arms for this uprising, because the shredded, pulpy _mess _was the trademark of an early-issue disruptor rifle. Not Klingon or Romulan in origin - they had progressed beyond leaving bloody holes like that - but similar to the first versions that Tellarites or Humans had produced: designed not to kill with a burst of energy, but rip apart the flesh.

And that was exactly what it had done.

The wound wasn't big - about the size of Jim's clenched fist, perhaps - but it was a mess. The skin had been completely melted away, and a green minced _mess _waited inside, like a disturbing hamburger. He could see, in the torchlight, the faint gleam of white from two of Spock's ribs, and thick, dark green blood oozed from the torn blood vessels and ripped muscle with every inhalation.

"_Fuuuuck_," he breathed, crouching low to get a proper look.

There was...something was _moving_ in there and - Jim wrenched himself away, quelling the urge to vomit, as he realised that the thick, spongy _mass _twitching around in there was...

"Fuck me, I can see your lung," he moaned around his own hand, and swallowed hard. "Fucking _hell_. That's a goddamn _disruptor _shot."

"I realise that," Spock snapped. "If you are quite done..."

"Get your shirt off," Jim ordered, helping him sit up enough to remove the outer tunic. How Spock was _moving _with a wound like that was beyond him, but the Vulcan's face was_ tight_, his breathing irregular, and Jim cursed again as he folded the tunic up into a pad. "Lie down," he snapped.

He couldn't pack the wound - they didn't have a first aid kit, and in any case, Jim had no idea if packing gauze so close to the exposed lung was a good idea. And hell, _he had an exposed lung_.

"You are _so _fucking lucky that didn't get your lung," he snarled, wedging the pad of cloth underneath Spock's black undershirt, and pressing down hard, ignoring the suddenly tense breathing. On the plus side, it seemed to even _out _his breathing. "Fucking _Christ_. Now what?"

"I do not believe that I can move."

"Yeah? Well, thanks for that _brilliant _piece of insight," Jim growled. "You go running with this, you'll fucking bleed to death, and we have _no idea _if they can beam us out at any point _before _rendezvous."

"They will not."

Jim squinted at him, still pressing down on the pad with both hands. The blood was seeping through - not dangerously so, not yet, but if he couldn't stop it, then Spock would probably bleed to death before the natives came back in the morning.

It was _sticky_, he vaguely noticed. Vulcan blood was _sticky_.

"How sure are you about that?"

"Ninety..."

"A lot, then?" Jim interrupted.

"Yes," Spock's breathing was shallow - probably due to the pressure Jim was forcing onto one lung - and so he sounded slightly breathless. "This planet has two moons that interfere with transporter technology. It is well documented, and they are both in the sky tonight. The rendezvous point is likely to be the only point at which the transporters will work at all, and if the natives have damaged the..."

He faltered, and Jim's head snapped up to scowl at him.

"...If the natives have damaged the boosting array in the riots..."

"Then we're fucked until morning," Jim summarised.

"...Indeed."

"Right," Jim muttered. "We have our own boosters, though. If they can get a booster down to us - then I can bring the booster to _you_, not the other way around."

"Mr. Scott will only be able to beam into the rendezvous point."

"Then I guess I'm going to the rendezvous point," Jim muttered. His fingers felt like they were trying to glue themselves together using Spock's blood. "Goddamnit. Why the _fuck _didn't you tell me sooner?"

"We were otherwise occupied."

"Oh, right, yeah, like I was totally _otherwise occupied _when you decided that what we've got is a casual fling and you wanted out? Like that?"

Spock's face tightened and he said nothing.

"I'm going to fucking _kill _you," Jim snarled. "Do I look like I'm not motherfucking _invested _to you?"

He removed one hand to fumble for his communicator, laying the torch out on Spock's chest and pointing it towards the wound (and away from the mouth of the hole) and snapped it open. All the lights were out, and there was no reply when he hailed.

"Damn," he snapped. "Alright. Well, we can't wait 'til morning - at least, you can't - and you're adamant I can't get you to the point..."

"I would bleed to death before I could reach it."

Jim paused, the words..._stark_.

"Right," he said slowly. "Thanks for that uplifting bit of news."

"I see no point in lying."

"Yeah, let's foster open communication _now_," Jim snapped, peering at the pad again. "I think the bleeding's slowing."

Spock's ribs were barely moving under his palm, and he scowled at his still face for a moment, eyeing his lips for signs of discolouration.

"When we get back," Jim said quietly, "I'm going to smack you stupid, you pointy-eared _bastard_. How _dare _you think you're not fucking important to me."

Spock said nothing, and his face didn't so much as twitch, but one pale, _cold _hand drifted down to curl around Jim's wrist and squeeze lightly.

"Yeah, I know," Jim muttered. "I can follow the track road they used the first time around - straight on at every crossroad, yeah?"

"You should...hide in the undergrowth..."

"Roadblocks, gotcha," Jim nodded, squeezing that hand back for a brief second before placing it back on Spock's chest. "I reckon thirty, forty minutes there, and a little more than that back. Hour and twenty round trip, tops. You can do that."

He looked up from his efforts when silence met him. Flashing the torch briefly up to Spock's face got a faint stir of movement, and those dark eyes blinked at him.

He looked confused. _Fuck_.

"Hour and twenty," he said, pressing Spock's hand over the padding he'd made. "Hold that there. Got it? Okay, good." He reached for Spock's belt, keeping up the talk in the hope that Spock was actually trying to listen to him. "I'm going to strap you up and make you as comfortable as I can - don't twitch like that, I'm not stripping your belt off for shits and giggles!"

"I am gratified," Spock muttered, but his voice was thready, and Jim's stomach lurched sickeningly.

"Odds?"

"Specify."

"Of me getting out of here and back without getting my ass Swiss-cheesed."

"...As..."

"Getting shot, Spock. Repeatedly."

"...I see..."

"Don't ask."

"Very well," Spock muttered, hissing when Jim gingerly worked the leather of the belt up to lie around his ribs. "Approximately sixty-eight percent."

"Not sixty-nine?"

Even in the torchlight, Jim could see quite clearly the distinctly unimpressed look that he got.

"As they have not passed over our..."

"Our ditch."

"...Our ditch, then you should be able to escape undetected."

"Spock, are you _sure _that you can't?" Jim knew what he sounded like - namely, begging - but he didn't damn well care. Nobody else was around to hear him.

"At my current rate of respiration and physical movement, it would take approximately one point two five hours for my blood loss to become critical. If I were to elevate my respiration and movement to the levels required to reach the rendezvous point..."

He trailed off, and Jim paused in preparing to snap the belt closed.

"Spock? How long would that take?"

"...Perhaps fifteen to twenty minutes."

And assisting Spock, it would take them a _hell _of a lot longer than twenty minutes to get there. Jim's lips thinned.

"Alright, so I'm the running boy," he muttered. "Got it."

One point two five hours. Hour and fifteen. He'd have to run _fast_, but it was do-able.

"Jim, it would benefit your chances if..."

"Suggest I leave you here _permanently_, and I will make _damn _sure this hurts."

Spock fell quiet again - through probably not from Jim's threat - and then Jim whisked the belt closed, and the body under his hands tightened impossibly in a mute expression of pain. The belt, however, forced the pad of folded and torn clothing tight over the bloody wound, and Jim hoped it would buy Spock precious minutes until he could get back with a booster.

"Okay," he breathed, squirming up along Spock's body to rub muddy fingers into filthy hair, hoping to soothe. "It's okay. That should hold you tight until Bones can attack you with hyposprays and beeping things and whatever else you throw at muddy Vulcans with holes in their sides."

Spock's breathing began to resume a normal pattern.

"Here," Jim slipped off his gold tunic, folding it into a cushion and wedging it along one side of Spock's face, forcing his head between the ditch wall and the cloth. "There. If you pass out, your head won't loll and you won't drown."

"You must go."

"Yeah," Jim's fingers fell to the skin of Spock's face, crusted over in places with mud and probably the blood that Jim was now smearing there. He snapped off the torch, his stomach rebelling at the _green _swirling in amongst the brown all around them, and mapped a path with his fingers before leaning down and kissing him fiercely, trying to transmit _everything _- apology, defiance, resistance, promise, faith, hope, want, sorrow, fear - past himself and into Spock, reaching to that telepathy he didn't understand to hear him, and hear everything he couldn't say as well as the stupid, inane shit that he could.

Spock's reciprocation was weakened, _shaky_, and Jim broke it to breathe for a moment and feel the returned air, warm from struggling lungs in the cold, wet environment.

"Be here when I get back."

It was a question, statement, order, demand, request, plea, and when one hand came up to curl briefly into his hair - just for a moment, a lapse Spock had never allowed himself on duty before - he knew that every version had been heard.

"Go."

"Be right back."

And with that, he slipped free of the mud and back into the driving rain and the darkness.

Alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes: The penultimate chapter. It's nearly over, guys ;) Also, LJ is really not cooperating with me right now. I tried to wait for it to work, but this is getting ridiculous, so here you go.**

* * *

><p>Escape was easy.<p>

Monarians had poor eyesight in the dark. Their guns, Jim suspected, were designed to compensate for that, but the result was that they typically just didn't do anything at night. As he'd slipped away, he'd seen the lights of camps set up for the night - perhaps they assumed Humans couldn't see in the dark either - but nobody was on patrol.

Or perhaps they were merely inept.

A twenty minute sprint, for a Starfleet officer, wasn't much, and the ridge broke a trend of flat land. The road itself travelled mostly flat grasslands, and Jim stuck to the dense undergrowth at the roadside, crashing his way through and creeping silently past every deserted crossroad and roadblock.

There was _nobody _around, and that fact alone was eerie.

He reached the paved slabs of the outer road at a steady run, and his communicator began to feebly crackle and flicker against his chest as he passed into the outskirts of the capitol. The area was deserted, and foot-long vermin crept away from the fallen bodies as he slipped between the buildings, silent as the dead themselves.

The rebels...

They had not gone _mad_, the way he had seen riots by Humans, but the damage was intense and he stepped over a corpse every five metres or so. The smell of burning - wood, oil and flesh - hung heavy in the air, and something was still burning, rising clouds blurring the larger of Monaris I's moons.

The communicator chirped, and Jim ducked back into the shadows to open it.

In the dark, navigating the city was hard, but he knew he was close: the communicator had linked up to those of his dead crewmen, and his mouth tightened as he opened a channel.

"Kirk to _Enterprise_."

There was a pause, then Uhura's, "_Enterprise_ here, Captain."

"Thank fuck for that."

"Likewise, sir," she returned. "What's your status?"

"Fucked," he said. "They killed our security and removed Commander Spock and me from the transporter zone. I need Scotty to advise; the Commander's been injured and I can't get him back inside the zone."

"One moment, please."

There was a brief hum of interference, before Scotty's distinct rumble came through. "Are ye near the transporter zone yeself, Cap'n?"

"About fifty metres or so," Jim guessed, peering around the corner and squinted at the faint bulk of the booster arrays.

"We cannae read the Commander's life signs, communicator or transponders."

He sounded tense; Jim winced, wondering exactly what had happened up there when both the Captain and the XO had gone off-radar entirely in the middle of an uprising.

"He's _well _out of the zone, trust me on this one, Scotty."

"We can beam down a portable booster, sir. We'd need to rustle up one for each o' ye, and ye'd need to stay close together - and even then..."

"Scotty, I'm serious here, it's all or nothing. We're out of options: the Commander _can't _be moved, and if we wait it out until morning, the locals are going to find us, and trust me, they're pissed enough as it is."

"Aye, sir," Scotty capitulated. "I'm just sayin', Cap'n...it might no' work."

"It's the best we've got," Jim said grimly. "If we don't, then we lose the Commander anyway. I need those boosters."

"Aye, sir, we'll beam them into the rendezvous point at yer signal."

"Thanks, Scotty. Uhura, is McCoy there?"

"I'm here, Jim."

"Thank fuck. Look, I need something for Spock. He's been shot - some kind of primitive disruptor-type weapon, like the early Tellarite or Earth prototypes."

He distinctly heard Uhura catch her breath then.

"Where's the wound?"

"Right side, about three inches under the arm, and it's the size of my fist. I can't move him. I padded it and strapped the pad over with his belt, but he was already weak when I left him. If the boosters don't immediately work..."

"You'll be cuttin' it that close?"

"I think so," Jim bit his lip, sliding from his hiding place and creeping along the wall. They had evacuated, he realised belatedly. They had ripped out their belongings from their homes and fled.

"Could you get medical personnel to _him_?"

"No," Jim said flatly. "It's going to be hard enough to get myself back without getting caught. And anyway, you won't get three people in the ditch."

"The...nevermind," McCoy cut himself off.

"_Bones_," Jim hissed.

"Jim," McCoy sighed heavily. "There's not a lot I can give you there. I'll need him in surgery the minute he's beamed up, and you just can't give a Vulcan any kind of stimulant or booster on top of a sedative. It can't be done."

"_Shit_," Jim hissed. "Is there...fuck. Isn't there anything I can do?"

"Short of keeping him still and slowing the bleeding, no," McCoy said. "Try and keep him awake and aware, and wait for beam-out."

"Alright," Jim groaned, the heavy pool of anxiety in his stomach intensifying. "I'm entering the rendezvous point."

"Beaming down, sir."

The faint shimmer of the transporter lights lit up the square in vivid blue-and-white brilliance for a brief moment, throwing the faces of the bloody corpses into sharp relief, and then faded out to darkness again. Jim washed his torch over the space, and bent to pick up the impossibly small booster buttons, affixing them to his own shirt.

"Okay, got them," he said.

"I'll keep a watch on your frequency and we'll be ready to beam you out as soon as you say so," Uhura said smoothly. "The boosters might take a moment or two to work properly once you change their target, but no more than that."

"Understood. Kir-"

"Captain?"

"Yes?"

She paused, infinitely briefly, and said, "Come home safe. _Both _of you."

It was a small, tiny gesture from a woman who usually rolled her eyes at him and cracked jokes about his farm boy upbringing - and it produced a small burst of warmth in his chest in the middle of this dark, wet, cold, _deadly _planet.

"Understood. Kirk out."

* * *

><p>The last fifty metre sprint up the hill before having to drop to his belly for the final three hundred metre stretch was the most exhausting thing Jim had ever done, and largely for the ache where his guts used to be. He didn't have Spock's time sense or knowledge of Vulcan anatomy, but he <em>knew <em>how bad the bleeding had been, and he was pretty sure that Vulcans had about the same amount of blood as a Human.

He also knew that he'd been almost an hour and a half now, and he was running out of time.

Then he dropped to his belly, hugging the ground, at the crest of the hill and inched over it to note, with a chill that matched the ice-blue of the pre-dawn sky, the lights of the hostiles had gotten closer to their hiding place.

_Much _closer.

It was still dark enough - just, and brightening quickly - that the first two hundred and fifty metres was not any more stressful than his escape, but the last fifty brought him close enough to the lights to begin to pick out the shadowy forms of the hostiles in their circles.

They had weapons, and faint alien tones drifted in on the breeze, and Jim's blood froze over even as he shuffled, inch by painstaking inch, to the hidden mouth of the hole.

If they came over the overhanging rocks, it would not be hidden enough.

It took an agonising, _excruciating _ten minutes (perhaps more) that they couldn't afford for Jim to be able to slip into the hole without being detected, and even as he wriggled back into the dark sanctuary, he was snapping open the booster and his communicator, praying the signal would jump far enough even as he wrapped it in the lower half of his shirt to muffle any potential noise.

It stayed silent, but the connection lights began to gleam in the darkness, and Jim's adrenalin spike finally began to fall at the sheer _relief_.

"Kirk to _Enterprise_," he whispered, the communicator inches from his lips even as he crouched over the still body in the mud and clipped the booster to the soaked tunic. "_Silence_."

There was a pause, and then very, _very _quietly: "Scotty here, Cap'n. We have ye on muted sound."

"Good," Jim breathed. "Beam us out _now_. Have a medical team standing by. I need to close off the communicator again."

"It'll take about three t' four minutes for the booster t' work, sir. Hold tight, and try t' stay as close to the Commander as ye can. We'll get ye out."

Jim didn't bothered answering, shutting off the communicator and shifting to crouch as low over Spock's body as he could, reaching up to clasp his face between his hands.

"Spock?" he whispered, lips millimetres from his ear, but although he could feel shallow breathing against his cheek, there was no reply.

He could also, from this range and through his fingertips, feel the cold, clammy sweat drenching his skin, and the burn of fever, and the fine, fine tremor that had taken hold. That puff of air against his cheek was faltering and too shallow; if he could see them, Jim imagined that his lips would be discoloured. His pulse, skimming under the thin skin of his temple, was irregular, and Jim could count the individual beats - still _fast_, but not fast _enough_. And the tremor, even in the last couple of seconds, was fading out. He might have already gone into convulsions in Jim's absence, and now...Jim swallowed. When he reached down to feel the improvised pad, it was stiff and taut with blood, and not all dried blood at that.

They didn't _have _three or four minutes.

An iron fist clenched around his stomach, and he breathed deep to keep the nausea at bay.

"Hold on," he whispered, breathing the words over Spock's lips. "Just hold on. We're going home."

The earth above vibrated lightly and he stilled, listening.

The voices were closer - chattering, almost like birds - and definitely getting closer.

Jim hunched defensively, drawing himself up to better shelter Spock's head and upper body, and drew his phaser from his belt, aiming for the mouth of the hole, not a metre and a half from them. As the footfalls came over their heads and paused, Jim dropped his face - eyes still trained unwaveringly on the mouth of the hole, and kissed the burning skin of Spock's forehead.

The footsteps paused.

Jim hunched further, arching his shoulders over, tucking his chin over the top of Spock's head, and folding his free hand over the hair. If he could just shield him long enough, just keep them from shooting him again for another thirty seconds, maybe not even that, then...

An explosion of chattering burst above his head - and the tingle of the transporter _flooded _his senses.

* * *

><p>An explosion of noise burst above his head the moment that the transporter pad materialised below him.<p>

Danger-trained reflexes meant he was off Spock's body and out of the way in a heartbeat, and though one nurse followed him with a tricorder, the rest crowded around Spock's still, silent form. McCoy was among them, barking orders as they transferred him to a stretcher.

Jim barely paused, ducking around the gaggle of medical personnel and sprinting out into the corridor, running for the turbolift. He knew what he looked like, and he didn't damn well care - and his appearance probably contributed to the path that was carved for him.

He burst onto the bridge and snapped his fingers at Uhura without even looking around, marching straight for the chair. "Go to yellow alert, when's the _Yorktown _going to damn well get here, and find out who the _hell _is declaring themselves in charge right now on Monaris I!"

"Yes, sir."

The siren blared as the warning went out, and a moment later Scotty stepped onto the bridge, looking infinitely relieved.

"Good to have ye back, sir," he said smartly, before launching into the explanation Jim actually wanted. "Monaris I has dissolved intae civil war, and Monaris II has called for ceasefire."

"Thank fuck, one war in exchange for another," Jim said grimly.

"Sir, the _Yorktown _is estimating another three hours."

"Give them two," Jim snapped. "What about Command?"

"We've been sending reports every half hour, sir," Sulu said as Uhura suddenly launched into a flurry of Monarian chatter with whoever was on the other end of her transmitters. "Mixed reviews. They're pleased we're avoiding open war, but civil war wasn't really on the cards either."

Jim just grunted, and Uhura swung in her seat.

"It's still a complete mess down there," she said. "The minority government is claiming responsibility, the majority government is still claiming to be functional when they're _not_, and..."

"I get it," Jim snapped. "Alright, people. Fill me in, properly, _now_."

There was a sharp pause, then Uhura rose from her station. The normal chain of command was tricky beyond Captain and First Officer - officially, the CMO was next in line (but nobody _ever _used that route because doctors just _were not trained for command_), traditionally it was the Chief Engineer (but Scotty was more valuable in the engine room than in the chair) and technically, Jim could appoint whoever the hell he wanted off the command crew.

He had officially left Scotty in charge, but judging by the fact he hadn't been on the bridge, Sulu had _actually _taken command, which meant that Uhura was, for now, the First Officer. And now that Jim was _back_, he had to formally _tell _someone that they were the First Officer because he - like most Captains - never bothered doing so in times of normal operations.

God, it was giving him a headache just thinking about it.

"Uhura," he snapped, formally deciding, and she nodded.

"The majority government is scrambling to crown the heir to the queen. The minority government denies any _official _connection to the uprising but is openly supportive. The rebels themselves informed us that they were keeping you and Commander Spock hostage in order to ensure no interference from Starfleet or the Federation regarding their uprising."

"I hope someone told them to go to hell."

"Diplomatically, sir. We informed them that it would not work; in response, Starfleet Command is sending two additional battle cruisers and the Federation has declared their actions as openly hostile and deliberately provocative."

Jim groaned. They were buzzwords, and meant only one thing. The Federation were prepared to go to war over it themselves, and would use Starfleet to do so. They were not avoiding war at all.

"However, the rebels did inform us that the trigger was the decision to go to war with Monaris II. They have declared a state of peace again, and Monaris II has agreed to remove itself entirely from the conflict, and have declared themselves neutral."

"Right," he muttered. "Anyone want to tell me _why _their former queen was quite that mad?"

"We were unaware, sir," Uhura said. "The last reports from the Ambassador to Earth stated that the Monarian majority government was a little scatterbrained, but there was no rumour of insanity. They kept it a secret."

"I can see why," Jim muttered darkly. "And the quietest revolution in history?"

"Only because you were removed from it," she corrected. "It's become a...a bloody mess. All of the major cities have locked down, and nobody's talking to anyone else right now."

"Do we have a rebel leader to talk to?"

"No sir, but the minority government are in open support of the rebellion, and they have a president - Gevik."

"Get me the president. I don't fucking care what time it is down there, or how many fucking lockdowns they have in place. My men were _murdered _down on that planet and I want to know _why _we were sent into a shitstorm _completely _unprepared."

"Yes, sir."

"Sir?"

He jumped when the tiny yeoman appeared at his elbow, with an armful of cloth. She offered them silently, and he was surprised to find a warmed, damp towel and a fresh command tunic from the dryers.

"Thank you...?"

"Petersen, sir."

"Thank you, Petersen."

She bobbed in a quick bow and scuttled to a corner - presumably to wait for him to be done with the towel. He stripped the worst of the mud away quickly, and slipped on the fresh shirt, grateful for the warmth, by the time Uhura turned back from her station.

"I have the president."

"On screen," Jim said, settling back in his chair.

The screen flickered with interference for a moment or so, and eventually cleared to reveal a small Monarian man in a plush office, visibly sweating and looking more than a little uncomfortable.

"Capt-ayne Kerrk," he chirped, and Jim scowled.

"President Gevik," he said flatly. "Starfleet requires an explanation."

Gevik's face performed an interesting twitch. "The involvement of your men was of course regrettable, Capt-ayne, but we are supportive of the aims of the rebels in..."

"In inducing a massacre and expecting the Federation to stand by?" Jim interrupted coldly.

"In ridding ourselves of an ineffective and warlike government."

"By triggering war."

Gevik frowned; it looked like he had gas. "I..."

"If your rebels - and I am not convinced they're _not_ yours - wanted to avoid Federation interference, then they certainly went about it in the wrong way. My men were attacked, four of them _murdered _in the governmental capitol. My First Officer and I were removed to what amounted to a prisoner of war camp, and imprisoned. Upon our escape, my First Officer was _shot_, and is currently ungoing emergency surgery in the medical facilities of this ship. You have _killed _four of my men, possibly five, and whatever you think of the Federation, _Starfleet _does not accept such casualties."

Gevik had gone a little pale, but piped up anxiously: "Your men should not have been..."

"My men were invited into the territory of the majority government _by _the majority government," Jim snarled. "It would have been perfectly simple to request my men and myself to leave - as was the case with my communications officer - but instead hostages were taken and this was _deliberately _turned into a conflict situation."

"Captain, the _USS Yorktown _is hailing us."

"I suggest, President Gevik, that you engineer negotiations with the Federation and the fleet _very carefully _from this point on. The situation has been formally declared as _openly hostile_, and while it is not our aim to go to war, that is what we will do if we feel it is necessary," Jim said coldly, carefully enunciating every single syllable. "Am I understood?"

Gevik openly scowled, and straightened in his chair. "Understood, Capt-ayne."

"Lieutenant Uhura, get him off my screens, and open a link with the _Yorktown_."

* * *

><p>It was a full shift before they were able to go off-duty, the <em>Yorktown <em>and the newly-arrived (and aptly-named) battle cruiser _USS Glock_ taking over the terse, tense 'negotiations' (or exchanges of furious rhetoric and angry threats) and finally allowing the _Enterprise _to stand down.

And so Jim Kirk had been on his feet for almost fifty hours before he could hand over the reins to Commander Yudin and stand down.

He was _exhausted_. It was not just tiredness, but sheer exhaustion, sinking into his very bones. He felt lethargic, almost oddly depressed, and shaking apart at the seams from the adrenalin drop and the double-whammy of being physically drained and emotionally wrecked.

"Sickbay," he said, stepping into the turbolift, and Uhura zipped in after him.

"Are you injured?"

"No," he said, scrubbing a hand over his still-grimy face. "Just exhausted. I need an update on Spock, and..."

"Deck Fourteen," she ordered. "Cancel Sickbay." The turbolift hummed appreciatively. "I called Sickbay as we clocked out. He's out of surgery."

Jim blinked at her.

"Jim..." she reached and stopped the lift. He blinked again at the use of his first name, his exhausted brain struggling to keep up. "You didn't turn your communicators fully off, so when you passed through less-affected zones...I heard you."

"You heard me what?"

"I heard you talking to Spock," she clarified gently. "You're...involved."

Something in Jim's brain paused, rewound and replayed, then sat and balked for a moment, then remembered that etiquette demanded some sort of response.

"Um..."

"I don't think anyone knows but me, and I kept you on a private link so nobody else heard," she added hastily. "I mean...if you want to keep it secret, that's fine but...this isn't just your First Officer being injured, is it?"

Jim swallowed, and dropped his chin.

"No," he admitted. "No, it's not."

"Oh, Jim," she said - and hugged him.

She wasn't a big woman, and had to stretch a fair bit to slid those warm arms around his shoulders. That was the first thing - she was _warm_, and every inch of that lithe body firm and real and _comforting_, strong enough to gather him into a hug he hadn't admitted to wanting or needing, but...

He dropped his face into her shoulder and curled both arms around her back.

A hug very much appreciated.

"Thank you," he heard himself croak into her shoulder, and her fingers brushed through the hair at the nape of his neck.

"What do you need?" she whispered.

He struggled with that - want and need were different things, and he had to know the difference all the time, but right now...

"I need to know if..."

"You need," she interrupted quietly, "to clean up, get a little food into you and maybe a bit more coffee, and then go down to Sickbay. Just take fifteen minutes to do that, and you'll feel better for it, and then Leonard's more likely to actually talk to you instead of sedating you."

He chuckled wetly, and felt her cheek crease against his in a smile.

"You too?" he asked.

"_Everyone_," she agreed, letting go and squeezing his shoulders before reactivating the lift. "Come on. You hop in your shower, and I'll get some coffee, and complain about the state of your quarters."

"You've never seen my quarters," Jim protested half-heartedly as they were spat out onto his floor.

"I don't _need _to," she sniped.

* * *

><p>Nyota Uhura was a queen amongst goddesses amongst angels, and Jim wondered (not for the first time) at Spock's insanity in having let her go.<p>

Or, at the very least, she was always right.

A blast in the sonic cubicle, an entire change of clothes, a halfway decent ham sandwich from the replicator, and a mug of coffee that was probably illegally large later, and Jim was feeling somewhat human. He had emerged from the bathroom to find Uhura on his desk console, talking to one of the Sickbay nurses, and had been presented with the ridiculous mug of coffee the moment that he was decently dressed.

"Marry me," he said, burning his tongue on the coffee and not caring, and she rolled her eyes.

"If that's your aim, you have a _long _way to go," she said.

"You brought me coffee, a sandwich, and a hug. What else do you expect a guy to do?"

"You owe me," was the flat response, before she shepherded him back out of his quarters and back along the corridor. The yellow alert had powered down, with the heavy presence of Starfleet's finest battleship now guarding them, but everyone was still far too busy to note the Captain (or the coffee mug) being dragged around by his communications officer without a murmur.

His good humour died, however, when they approached the Sickbay doors. Uhura wordlessly left him to go in alone, and he stepped across the threshold in time to see McCoy sweep out of the ICU unit at the back of the bay, dressed in his surgical scrubs and splattered with bright green blood to the elbows.

Jim, quite suddenly, felt sick all over again.

"Why in the _hell _aren't you asleep?" McCoy demanded, snapping his fingers and pointing a nearby biobed. "Sit _down_! Good God, Jim, what on _earth_...?"

"How's Spock doing?"

"I should have known," McCoy grumbled, crossing to a wall sink and jerking on the tap roughly. "We just finished getting him settled - _no_, you can't go and talk to him!" he snapped when Jim took half a step towards the ICU. "He's completely out of it, for one, and for another, you should be too."

He wrenched a paper towel off the dispenser and returned to Jim's side, scrubbing his (thankfully clean) hands dry.

"Have you stood down?"

"Yes. The _Yorktown_'s taking over so we can crash for twelve hours."

"Then why aren't you?"

"I don't know, probably something to do with having no clue whether I have to permanently promote one of my bridge officers or dig out my ceremonies book!" Jim snapped.

"Not yet," McCoy said shortly. "Anything else?"

Jim's spine sagged in relief, and McCoy unfolded to catch him under the elbow.

"You need to sleep, Jim," he said quietly. "I know you're worried about Spock - hell, I've had most of the bridge crew call in since Alpha shift went off, we're _all _worried - but you can't do your duty this tired."

"Look, just...tell me how he is, and then I'll go to bed."

McCoy paused, then nodded. "Alright. But sit _down_, before you damn well fall down."

Jim obeyed, slithering up onto one of the biobeds, which chirruped encouragingly.

"Shurrup," he mumbled, and McCoy switched it off.

"It wasn't a disruptor rifle," he said flatly. "Strange form of projectile weapon, and a textbook injury for it. I fed that data into the files, and the computer spat back an answer in under ten seconds."

"What was it?"

"Toberian gun," McCoy said flatly. "Fires a projectile that looks something like a comb. Rips through the flesh, takes massive chunks out of the victim. Could break the bones in a Human, but Vulcan bone is too dense, so he got lucky."

"So..."

"It literally ripped a chunk out of his side," McCoy summarised. "Jim, I can't tell you how close it came. If he were Human, he would have died long before we could have got him out - his lungs would have collapsed."

"What?"

"You puncture the chest cavity, and we can't breathe," McCoy said shortly. "Vulcan lungs are wrapped in a membrane to prevent that, but it doesn't so much _stop _the problem as delay the death. But without that delay..."

"_Shit_."

"Yeah. The lungs work like a pressure valve - you let air into the chest cavity, and you run the risk of collapsing the lungs or suffocating the patient because their own lungs just won't inflate. If he'd had Human lungs, he would have died in a matter of minutes. As it is, he was probably only about another ten away from suffocating anyway. He went into convulsions twice on the table before we could oxygenate him properly. I'm still worried about brain damage."

"_Fucking hell_," Jim hissed, and was suddenly glad for being sat down.

"Yeah. He came _damn _close, but I've got a drainer on him to keep the pressure equal," McCoy said grimly. "He'll remain stable now until I can close it properly. And the hole _itself _- well, I can fix that without much problem. He won't be impressed at the amount of necessary grafting and regeneration, but that won't kill him. I'm more concerned about the blood loss and the infection. There's a lot of foreign bacteria in his veins now, and his immune system will have taken a knock. And _then _there's the blood loss..."

"Can't you synthesise more?"

"Nope," McCoy shook his head. "Can't synthesise Vulcan blood like you can Human. It doesn't oxygenate their brains well enough. You need real blood, and we've already used up all the stocks just keeping him alive."

"_Fuck_."

"The good news is that we've used up all the stocks, and it seems to be working. He's out like a light and I'm keeping him that way, but his vitals have improved and his oxygenation levels are rising back to the norm. The problem is I've had to close off the wound with a localised field, and I can't operate until I have more blood or he's significantly stronger. I've got him on drugs to boost his blood production, but whether he's strong enough to cope..."

"Can we call in for a shipment?"

"I don't know," McCoy shrugged. "I haven't had the time to make enquiries."

"Make them," Jim ordered. "The _Yorktown_ just showed up; they might have something or know something..."

"Jim, we don't have to worry about that _right now_," McCoy soothed. "I can't operate anyway. He's too weak. My priorities right now are boosting his own blood volume, and flushing out the infection. He won't be up and about for three or four days from the antibiotics anyway, never mind the surgery."

"Bones, we can't afford to have a man down right now."

"You'll have to," McCoy said. "If he so much as sits up right now, he'll undo all of the work we put in trying to save him in the first place. There is just _no way _that he's coming back on duty. I'm good, Jim, but nobody's _that_ good, even in this day and age."

"But...he'll..."

McCoy unfolded and rubbed a hand over Jim's bicep. "He'll probably be fine in the end," he said soothingly. "He's a stubborn son of a bitch, and we both know it."

Jim summoned up a smile, and pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead. "Yeah."

"Go on, get to bed. You can manage without your First Officer for a couple of weeks."

"Are you kidding?" Jim grunted. "He's much better at politely telling dignitaries to fuck off than I am."

McCoy snorted. "Try Uhura, then. I'll bet she's even _better_."

Jim conjured up a smile. "Yeah. Maybe. You'll call me if anything changes?"

"Yeah, Jim, I'll keep you informed."

With one last look towards the still-busy ICU, Jim capitulated and turned for the door.

He wasn't wholly surprised to find Uhura waiting.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes: Final chapter, guys. Thank you all for the great feedback, and I'll see you next time!**

* * *

><p>Nightmares were...not uncommon, in the service, and almost everyone had that minor note of having been given sleeping aids at one time or another, including Jim. It was just about the only medical note that nobody looked twice at - stranger were the people who had never needed them.<p>

Jim knew the nightmares would come, and so he hadn't taken any.

He was not surprised, then, to jerk violently awake at 0306, his hand midway through the slap that should have woken Spock up only this time, this time when Jim had crawled back into the hole, he was _gone _- not just dead, but _rotting_, like a month-old corpse, _squirming _with an infestation of _maggots_...

Jim curled into the thin sheets of his bunk, fighting to get his stomach under control. Nightmares were one thing, but chucking it was just downright embarrassing.

After some five minutes, the rolling stopped and he uncurled himself. The ship was quiet, the yellow alert long-since deactivated and the ship humming contentedly under the quiet watch of the gamma rotation. It seemed obscene, for everything to move on in tight circles while his men were dead and his First Officer lay unconscious and still too close to death for anyone's comfort in the ship's hospital bay.

It seemed obscene, and yet Jim was grateful for it.

Knowing he wouldn't get back to sleep after those images, he rolled out of bed and stumbled his sleepy way through a swift shower, checking his messages for flags as he dressed, and eventually slipping from his cabin entirely.

The corridors were abandoned - the rest of the alpha shift were still down, and the beta shift probably also catching rest. It was instinct, when a crisis hit: catch sleep whenever and wherever you can, because it might be the last time for a _long _time.

It was the deserted silence of the corridors that allowed Jim's boots to make the decisions for him, and his restless pace of the corridors mutated into a slow, long-winded route to Sickbay, slipping through the narrower back-corridors used only by the maintenance and engineering crews, and coming across no-one.

The Sickbay, during gamma shift, was deserted - between 2000 and 0400, it was usually staffed with only Dr. Warr and a couple of nurses on rotational duty. And Dr. Warr liked to sit in the (McCoy's) office and pretend that he actually ran a busy Sickbay.

So slipping into the ICU without being seen was child's play.

McCoy had taken to putting Spock in a separate room to turn the heating up whenever he was going to be Sickbay for more than a routine procedure or a physical, so _really _the fact that he was in the ICU meant nothing at all. Jim was _used _to that.

Then he actually _saw_ him, and the ICU...made sense.

It was odd what the biobeds did to people. You could throw the beefiest jarhead in Security into one of the biobeds and he'd end up looking like a fragile china doll. To add Spock's lean physique and the usual paper-white of his skin to _that_...

Hell, his skin was entirely bloodless.

Jim had never seen him truly, truly ill before. There had been the phaser wound on Malthus II, and day four of the horrific, gut-spewing Reluvian virus that swept the crew (and was also responsible for the one and only time Jim had seen Uhura looking anything less than ridiculously perfect) but...that was it, really.

Now...

He looked smaller, in that weird hospital-bed way, and whatever Bones had spent hours doing last night hadn't given him all that blood back. There were fluid tubes (hell, Jim didn't know what they were for) running into the port on his left forearm, and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, and a monitoring bracelet that flashed dimly in time with the pulse that hummed quietly on the readout. The blanket bulged over a box-shape at his side, over the wound, and Jim supposed they were the localised fields and drainer that McCoy had mentioned. Jim had no idea what the drugs list meant, bar a heavy-duty sedative that he vaguely recognised as being used typically to drop angry Klingons in a hurry, and he didn't dare try to guess at whether the unusually low respiration meter was good or bad or neither at all.

But for all the shrunken, vulnerable look to him...

He was breathing, and that was more than Jim had hoped for twelve hours ago.

He stepped slowly around the bed to put it between himself and the door, and kept half an eye on those closed metal sheets as he inched a hand over the covers to clasp the cool (cold) fingers of Spock's hand gingerly. When nothing changed, he settled his hand into those long, still fingers more comfortably and started to rub gently - though whether he was trying to warm them or simply communicate his presence, he didn't know.

"Hey," he murmured, staring down at those slack, drained features almost blankly. Spock's lips were almost grey, devoid of any colour at all. "Sorry I'm late. The store got a bit busy."

The joke felt flat, but Jim found himself drawing a strange, surreal comfort from the hum of the biobed monitoring Spock's pulse. It was white noise - but good white noise all the same.

"At least the nurses cleaned you up some, huh?" he added, bringing up his other hand to brush through Spock's now-clean hair softly. It was still ruffled from where they hadn't combed it properly back into place, and Jim felt a flash of gallows humour. _He _could get it back into its proper state, no matter how wild the sex had been.

The communications console on the wall crackled briefly, and he glanced up, but the interference passed - presumably into the main bay for something or other.

"I'll have to go again in a minute," he said quietly. "I'll be back later. Be awake to say hi, okay?"

There was, of course, no response, and the slack cheek remained so when he bent to kiss it, lingering to breathe in the faint warmth of his skin and the faint tang of antiseptic.

"I do..." he began, and cut himself off when the lump in his throat began to form. "I just...I do. You know? I do."

The communication console hummed with interference again, and he pressed a kiss into the thin skin at Spock's temple, feeling the hummingbird pulse there, before straightening up and squeezing the limp hand in his.

"Come back soon - okay?"

* * *

><p>By the time he went on shift that morning, the emergency Federation council had declared Monaris I a non-member, and thus was withdrawing Federation funding, trade and protection until they could once again prove themselves to be a peaceable and developed world. And one that didn't fabricate the state of their politics to the Federation.<p>

"We're stationing the _Glock _until we know more about the conflict type, and we've taken into account the medical reports from your CMO on the weaponry used against your crew, but for now, there's little point in the_ Enterprise _remaining where she is," Admiral Pike told Jim seriously. "You'll be receiving new orders by the end of shift."

Jim scowled. The need for impartiality had its drawbacks; it felt distinctly like being scolded for letting the negotiations get out of control, even though he couldn't have done a damn thing anyway, and not being allowed to follow through on a disaster that had _killed _his personnel.

But then, Pike had a point. They were an exploratory vessel; the _Glock _was a fully-equipped battleship. It made _sense_, even if Jim didn't like it.

"Understood, sir."

"How's the Commander doing?"

"Still unconscious, but Dr. McCoy thinks he's responding well to the antibiotics for the infection. I...didn't really understand the rest of what he said," Jim admitted sheepishly. "Lieutenant Uhura and Lieutenant Sulu are splitting the role of Acting First Officer until the Commander's back on duty..."

"Uh-huh," Pike said. "So how are you doing?"

"What?"

"Don't try that on me, Kirk. You and Spock are just about the most formidable command team in the fleet, and you don't get to be that good without becoming attached to the guy. He's your friend."

"Friend or not, there's nothing I can do now," Jim shrugged, with a peace he didn't feel. "I've just got to put my faith in Bones and wait. We all do."

"Uh-huh," Pike looked sceptical, then shrugged and it fell away. "Well, it's not been signed off on yet, but I can tell you that your next batch of orders won't give anyone a breakdown trying to fill in for Spock. I'm presuming someone's taken over as Science Officer, too?"

"Lieutenant-Commander Jepedenski. She needs the experience, and she's a good officer," Jim shrugged. "I'm having to do my own paperwork too," he added, pulling a face, and Pike chuckled.

"It'll be good for you. Well, Godspeed, Jim, and let me know when Spock's on the mend."

"Will do, sir. Kirk out."

The moment that Pike's face faded from the screen, Jim sat back and frowned, the humour sliding from his face. If anything, the Monaris war had given him something else to think about, but if they were now being pushed sideways onto another exploratory mission, it just meant long hours in the chair with nothing to actually _do_, and without anything to do...

He groaned, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Why the _fuck _did all medical treatments involve sedatives?

* * *

><p>"I never thought I'd be so happy to play poker," Sulu said.<p>

They had received their orders at the end of shift, and handed over to Beta to take them out of the Monaris system and off to the edges of the Beta Quadrant - an eight-day journey at best, and one that would allow some measure of relaxation. At which point, McCoy had promptly ordered down time for the command crew, and so here they were - and Jim had a crap hand.

"I dunno about _happy_," he grumbled, wincing at his cards, and Uhura gave him a grin that reminded him of a cat. Right before it took your eyes out. For kicks. "I swear you're counting them."

"Don't have to," she informed him loftily.

Chekov wordlessly handed Jim what looked to be a shot glass of vodka. "It vill not get any better," he said sadly, and Jim swept his eyes around the rest of the table.

"Bones," he decided.

"Oh yeah," the doctor grinned.

The command crew's poker games almost always came down to two players duking it out - usually Uhura and whoever had been lucky enough to get a hand strong enough to challenge hers. So the poker games were really casual socials in which two members of the group attempted to win a two-person card game with dodgy rules.

"Okay, I am officially not the Captain for the next hour," Jim said, digging a bottle out of the cool box. "Drink, anyone?"

"_God _yes," Sulu moaned. "I fold." He abandoned his cards altogether and leaned over Chekov to take the bottle. Chekov ignored him in favour of trying to see Uhura's lucky hand.

"Bones?"

"I'm on call," McCoy said distractedly.

"I'll drink for you," Sulu decided generously.

"_Thanks_," McCoy drawled, rolling his eyes.

"I wouldn't, it takes a shit-ton to get Bones drunk," Jim advised.

"I'm willing to try."

"Well, don't come cryin' to me in the mornin' for a hangover cure," McCoy drawled, and Sulu grinned.

"I'm Asian - we're tougher than that."

"You are really, really not," Chekov scoffed.

"We are!"

"Sorry, 'Karu, Russians know more about handling alcohol than Asians," Uhura said.

Sulu pulled a face, and downed a shot.

In reality, none of them had ever been drunk on board. Jim - like most captains - turned a (very) blind eye to alcohol and gambling on board, but did enforce a cap. He was pretty sure nobody had ever gotten truly drunk on board - bar the accident with Ensign T'Yelka when the medical staff suddenly found out what happened when a Tulevian was giving laughing gas. For all the swagger, there would be no hangover cure - or hangover - in the morning, and if the alarms went off halfway through the game, they'd still be functional.

But sometimes Jim wished he _could _get drunk, only to forget the fact that usually Uhura would be trying to coax Spock into counting for her, or (if she was doing battle with McCoy) distract her opponent with that not-a-sense-of-humour-that-totally-was.

Yeah, sometimes Jim missed the booze.

"Russians only know about _vodka_," Sulu protested. "They don't..."

_"Dr. McCoy to the medical bay immediately_."

Everyone else around the table froze, but McCoy was moving before the alert clicked off again, throwing down his cards and going from nought to a full-on sprint by the time he hit the doors.

"What do you think...?" Sulu began, but Jim had already crossed to the nearest comms unit.

"Kirk to Sickbay, what's going on down there?"

There was a sharp pause, and then a woman's voice said, "We've requested Dr. McCoy..."

"Yes, I heard that, and he's on his way, but what _for_?"

She paused again. She was probably new, to be so unsure. All the other nurses made McCoy look positively cuddly. "Commander Spock, sir. I can't really disclose anythi..."

Jim abandoned the console. "I'm going down to Sickbay," he said shortly.

"Me too," Uhura folded, getting up and flying after Jim to the doors.

After a long pause, Sulu leaned over and turned over the abandoned hands.

"She would have lost, too," he grumbled, and Chekov poured another shot.

* * *

><p>The Sickbay, by the time Jim and Uhura reached it, was already a flurry of activity, and all of it centred around the ICU doors.<p>

Jim never knew what to _listen _for in a medical environment. Just about the only things he could recognise were a life-support klaxon and a flatline on the beds. Thankfully, neither seemed to be going off, but something _was _going mad in there (an ear-splitting intermittent beeping that had Uhura wincing) and medical staff seemed prone to running and shouting and generally looking panicked _all of the time_.

When Uhura's hand curled into the curve of his elbow, he realised how tense he was.

"Come on," she drew him a bench along the far wall, designed precisely for waiting queues. "There's nothing to be gained by getting in the way."

Jim only hummed, and let her guide him to sit.

"I feel," she said into the chaos, and so quietly that Jim had trouble hearing her, never mind the nurses, "as though I should be delivering some...threat."

He shot her a look, and she smiled.

"You're still a farm boy, Kirk, and he's still...well. He's Spock."

"Yeah," Jim agreed, though to what he wasn't sure.

"But this," she rubbed the steel-cord tension of his bicep gently. "This says I don't need to. You know what's at stake."

Jim had the distinct feeling that he had, once again, walked into some big, serious conversation without being quite sure how he'd gotten there. It was a feeling that he was definitely getting used to over the last week or so.

"Still a farm boy?" he tried weakly for a joke, and she graced him with that exasperated smile that said that for all she respected him as her Captain and a Starfleet officer, she still wished, just sometimes, to smack him stupid.

"If the hayfork fits," she opined loftily, and he cracked a proper smile.

"Look," he said quietly. "We...we have to, you know. You _know_. We have to keep it quiet."

"Yes," she said.

"Could you...just...I..."

"I'll go and squirm answers in your stead," she said, squeezing his arm, and as though on some strange psychic cue, McCoy emerged from the ICU, passing off a padd to one of the nurses and barking orders. She was on her feet at once, and Jim followed, suddenly feeling like he _couldn't _be caught out this time. Even when they _had _been together - years ago, now - Uhura hadn't been the type to fuss unnecessarily over Spock if he was ill or injured, but McCoy was a southerner _and _a doctor, and used to the thankless task of comforting the wives and girlfriends and mothers and sisters and daughters of the injured officers in Starfleet Medical.

Whether appropriate for Uhura's brand of efficient, steel-fibred soul or not, his face visibly softened when she approached.

"What happened?"

"His blood pressure spiked," McCoy said, stripping off his gloves. "As much as Vulcan blood pressure _does _spike, at any rate."

"Is he alright?" Uhura pressed.

"He's fine," McCoy soothed. "It's a good sign, actually. His blood production's rising; if he keeps that jump going, I'll be able to operate and fully seal the wound tomorrow afternoon."

"Is he awake?" Jim interrupted.

"No, I kept him under," McCoy said, shaking his head. "I'm keeping him down until the surgery. I don't care what Vulcans trot out about controlling pain, that's going to _hurt_, and in no part of my contract does it say 'allow pain to go untreated if treatment is possible.'"

"When can he receive visitors?"

"Shoulda known you'd ask," McCoy rolled his eyes at her, but his tone...softened slightly again. For all that he griped and moaned about Spock, he'd carried a soft spot for Uhura from the moment he'd met her. Probably because she was so good at batting Jim down. "Possibly tomorrow evening, depending how it goes."

She nodded, glancing one last time towards the now-closed doors of the now-quiet ICU, and stepped back from both men.

"In which case, I'll get myself back to the game," she said lightly. "And I'll see you tomorrow evening, Leonard."

He tipped his head - and half a second later, shifted his eyes to Jim.

"I wasn't kidding, Jim, he's out for the count."

"Yeah, yeah," Jim shook his head. "You said he wasn't strong enough to operate when we first beamed him up."

"He wasn't," McCoy shook his head. "At it is, I'm not _happy _about having to operate now but his body's under too much stress. I have to close the wound, and if I wait much longer, I'm concerned that his systems will just try and shut down that lung as a lost cause."

"That could happen?"

"It's possible," McCoy nodded. "I'd prefer to wait until his blood volume was back up to normal and we'd driven the infection out, but I don't think I can. He's already starting to breathe with one lung dominating, and that's not normal."

Jim nodded, worrying at his lower lip.

"Where are we headed now?"

"Exploratory on the edge of the Beta Quadrant," Jim shook his head. "We can manage without him for the moment, but...I'd prefer we didn't have to."

McCoy clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it, Jim. He's a stubborn son of a bitch, and even taking the infection into account, he's better now than he was when he was brought in. He'll be fine."

"You sure about that, Bones?"

"When am I ever wrong?"

* * *

><p>The problem with hiding things was...<p>

Well, you were hiding.

Jim wasn't the melodramatic type, not _really_, and besides, he trusted McCoy to be honest with him. If Spock were _dying_, he would have been told, and because he wasn't, Jim was able to just...get on with things, as it were. Spock would be back, and he would come back fine, and regardless, there wasn't anything Jim could do.

The maddening part came _later_.

It was just into the beta rotation, and as Jim stepped out of the shower, that his inbox chimed and he opened it to find a short script from McCoy telling the entire senior crew that Spock was out of surgery and able to receive visitors 'if you loud-mouthed adrenalin junkies kept it sedate, damn it.'

And he didn't really _think _about it until he showed up, but...

Well, Jim wasn't the only one to have been seamlessly absorbed into this brilliant team of people. Spock was not nearly as sociable as Jim, but he was liked well enough within it - even if Sulu did still steer clear of him out of sheer intimidation, and even if Chekov would get halfway through a maths spazz with him and then quite suddenly realise _who _he was arguing with, and promptly lose his voice and disappear.

Spock might not use the terms, but in their eyes, he was a friend as well, and so when Jim stepped into the ICU, he had...quite simply _not expected _there to be anyone else.

But there they were, and they made a picture. The head of his bed had been raised slightly, the blankets still lumped over the strange box of an isolation field, and Uhura sat at his left shoulder, Sulu and Chekov across from each other at his knees - and Jim laughed aloud to see the playing cards being dealt across the smooth, hospital-issue blankets.

"Even Bones won't let you bring booze to this party," he teased when they looked up, and Sulu scowled.

"Even though we all know he _has _it," he protested.

"Ah-ah," Jim shook his head. "I don't. Not officially."

"Of course not, Keptin," Chekov smirked. "There is no alcohol to know about."

"Quite right, Pav," Jim turned up his nose, snorted, and grinned. "How are you feeling, Mr. Spock?"

Whatever he felt, he didn't look much better than he had before, if all truth be told. The sheer whiteness of his face and hands was still alarming, and his head actually rested fully on the pillow, as though he simply didn't have the strength to sit up properly. His eyes were half-lidded, but the darkness sharp when they did meet Jim's, albeit the meeting was slow.

"Feeling, sir?"

Well, his brain was present and accounted for. Sarcasm and all.

"Yeah, feeling," Jim pushed, coming around to sit opposite Uhura. "Deal me in? Thanks. So, Spock?"

"Somewhat fatigued," came the predictable response, "but otherwise well."

"Yeah, you keep sayin' that," McCoy drawled as he came into the room with a padd and a scanner. "Maybe in a couple of days I'll believe you."

Jim peered up at the bed readouts with an inexpert eye, and frowned slightly at the temperature reading. He knew where it should be for a healthy Human, and therefore that it should be lower for a Vulcan, but they looked roughly the same.

"Still feverish?" he guessed.

"Yeah, but it's starting to creep down," McCoy drawled. "I got everything sealed up and in its proper place anyhow. Just bed rest, antibiotics and surface skin grafts for the next few days, and we'll go from there. Might need some physiotherapy on the damaged muscle."

Spock was either too exhausted to truly follow their conversation, or was wholly uninterested; he ignored the pair of them in favour of watching Uhura begin to thoroughly trounce Sulu.

"He'll doze off in a while," McCoy added to Jim quietly, even though they both knew that if Spock wanted to listen in, he could. "He's still on a lot of very strong drugs. If you see him struggling, pack it up."

"Will do," Jim agreed, finally reaching for his own hand. "Al_riiight_."

The game lasted for perhaps forty minutes, before Uhura made a faint noise in the back of her throat and Jim glanced up to see that Spock's eyes had finally closed. He was not asleep - there was too much idle tension in his upper body for that, and the brain monitors still hovered too high, but he was headed that way, and Jim nodded.

"Alright, children, let's pack it in for the night," he said. "Stargazing in the morning."

"Oh yay, more steering through emptiness," Sulu rolled his eyes.

"Don't give me that, you just spend eight hours playing minesweeper," Jim snorted.

The banter was vicious but quiet as they packed up, Chekov even daring to go so far as to gingerly pat Spock's shin underneath the blankets before zipping out the door as though the touch would wake him and send him into a murderous rage, and Sulu followed snickering at the navigator's shyness.

"He'll get over it one day," Uhura said fondly, slipping the cards back into their packet. "See you in the morning, Captain."

She gracefully left Jim to leave last, and Jim distinctly heard her approach McCoy with what sounded like questions, buying him a precious moment, when the doors closed, to lean down and brush a small kiss across dry lips.

Spock stirred, and Jim had never truly seen him look _sleepy _before, but that was what came to mind when he blinked hazily up at him.

"I have to go," Jim murmured. "You go to sleep, okay?"

"I did not apologise for my error in judgement," Spock murmured, still surprisingly coherent for how drugged he had to be, and Jim shook his head.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Just don't do it again. Any of it."

McCoy's voice was approaching the door, and Jim straightened up and took a step back.

"You're under orders, you know," he said lightly. "If you're not up and about in the next week, I'll have you put on KP duty."

"Doesn't sound like a half bad idea," McCoy said, entering in time to catch the end of Jim's threat. "Alright, you green-blooded masochist, you're just messing with me now. I said you could have an hour with them, and it's past that, so Jim, _git_."

And perhaps it was the ignorance with which McCoy had walked right into their conversation, but Jim turned back to Spock and cocked his head, drawn on one of his whims that even he didn't really understand.

"Do you want me to tell him?" he asked.

Spock's gaze sharpened, and those eyebrows twitched in stern...something.

"I'll tell him right now if you want," Jim said. He kept his voice light, and while McCoy glanced uncertainly between the pair of them, Spock's expression was _certain_.

"...That will not be necessary," Spock said, and Jim grinned, the final crack sealing over.

"You sure?" he injected a note of teasing, and Spock's eyebrow twitched.

"I am."

"Too bad," Jim clapped McCoy on the shoulder as he turned to go. "Your potions are making him feel sick again."

The doors slid shut behind him to the sound of a Georgian doctor cursing an alien man, and Jim had never felt better.

* * *

><p>"There's my man," Jim crowed, grinning when he glanced up from his plate and saw McCoy and Spock approaching the table. "Finally allowed to be up and about, huh?"<p>

"Indeed," Spock returned. He was still unusually pale - even for him - but not the same paper-white as before, and his eyes were sharp, his posture and voice perfectly composed and - well. Normal.

"Thank Christ, my paperwork pile is developing a pulse."

"I think he _means _to say that we're glad you're better," Uhura said, rolling her eyes at Jim.

"That _is _what I said," Jim retorted defensively.

"He bitched until I agreed to release him early just so I wouldn't have to hear the words 'time and resources' ever again," McCoy grumbled good-naturedly. "He's still on light duties until next week. Jim, do you know how much cholesterol that's going to give you?"

"Yes," Jim said defiantly. "Do light duties include paperwork?"

"You could learn to _read_, then you could do it yourself," McCoy sniped.

"Awesome captains don't do _paperwork_."

"You can't do _anything _approaching awesome without getting paperwork," Sulu said mournfully. "You should see my life insurance forms."

"I don't know why you bother," Uhura shrugged. She proceeded to ignore Sulu's attempts at justification by turning to Spock and rattling off a long, _long _string of Vulcan.

"My name was said," Jim narrowed his eyes.

"So?"

"So they're discussing me."

"Not everything's about you," McCoy said.

"Usually is," Jim pointed out.

"We're talking _about _you, Kirk, not _to _you," Uhura noted, rolling her eyes before carrying on the Vulcan conversation. Spock, for his part, did not look remotely bothered by it - but then, he never did.

"That's just not fair," Jim pouted.

"You could learn Vulcan," Sulu pointed out.

"Or he could not; his accent is _awful_," Uhura said.

"Hey, I'm good at languages!" Jim defended himself.

"Languages, yes. _Vulcan_? No," Uhura shook her head. "Have you ever heard him speak in Vulcan, Spock?"

"No."

"Then you're luckier than me," she complained. "A whole _semester _of that."

"It cannot be vorse than my attempts at Andorian," Chekov pointed out.

As the insults flowed around him, Jim sat back and relaxed.

Everything was back where it should be.

* * *

><p>"Enter," Jim called, hitting send on the final memo before twisting to see the doors of his cabin close behind his First Officer. "Hey," he grinned. "I wasn't sure you'd come along tonight."<p>

"I am offering my services in the prevention of your paperwork gaining sentience."

"Technically, I said a pulse, not sentience," Jim teased, flowing up from his chair and sauntering across the desk to the kiss that waited. "And really? Paperwork?"

"Perhaps not."

"Didn't think so," he grinned, nosing at Spock's cheek and running his hands up his sides, feeling the vague catch of newly-healed skin. "How you doing, huh?"

"I am well."

"Really."

"I am well, Jim," Spock persisted quietly. "I am somewhat fatigued, but quite well."

"Good," Jim said quietly. "I meant it, you know. If you want to tell them - whenever you want to tell them - we can. They're our friends; they wouldn't sell us out to Command."

Spock barely reacted. "It is not necessary, Jim. We would still have to behave secretively."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't think I'm hiding this away or ashamed of it. You wouldn't think you were some dirty little secret."

From the minute duck of Spock's head, Jim got the impression he would have coloured if he'd had the blood for it. "I committed a mistake based on incomplete data, and I..."

"Don't worry about it," Jim slide his arms around Spock's shoulders, beginning to toy with his hair. "It doesn't matter. Just - you know. If you ever want to tell them, it's fine by me."

"If you still wish the doctor to win his bet..."

"I guess so," Jim shrugged. "But that's just a bet. This? This is you and me."

"Nyota knows."

"Ye-eah," Jim grimaced. "She, er...yeah. She does." He peered at Spock suspiciously. "Wait...you knew she knew?"

"No - but she has strongly suspected, for some time. Not quite since the beginning of our arrangement, but..."

Jim groaned. "Oh great. No wonder she keeps snickering at me. Or looking like she wants to axe me and can't make up her mind."

"She would not..."

"I'm kidding."

"Jim, my point is that if Nyota is aware of our involvement, would she not be able to win this bet herself?"

Jim snickered. "Nope. She's banned from the betting pools, because those channels pick up _everything_. She knows _far _too much."

Spock paused, and tilted his head. "That seems to be an accurate assessment."

Jim grinned, and kissed the pondering expression away. "Uh-huh. So Bones'll still win, so I'll get half of his winnings, so I'll be all tipsy and horny on our shore leave, so you get the privilege of landing between the sheets with a tipsy, horny Kirk."

Spock blinked at him. "That is...a privilege?"

Jim pinched his arm. "Smartass."

"Indeed."

"Is it?" Jim slid his hands around to cup said ass, grinning and digging in his fingers until Spock's spine straightened almost imperceptibly. "Can I investigate?"

"You have done so before."

"Yeah, but I better make sure," Jim insisted, beginning to push Spock back towards the sleeping space. "Just in case Bones went a bit crazy and decided to fix that up too."

He pushed, and they landed bodily on the bunk, bouncing once from the force of it, and Jim grinned into the subsequent kiss, supremely happy with himself, his position, and his situation.

"Can you hear me? Is my mind loud?" he asked, kissing his way down Spock's neck and fumbling with the hem of the tunic. He was no telepath, but he was pretty sure his emotions - lust and attraction and desire and affection and everything they implied - were being pretty noisy, and when Spock's fingers twitched at his temple and he looked up in time to catch a brief, beautiful, tiny smile, he knew that he was right. "Is it?"

Spock smiled - that tiny, miniscule smile that it had taken Jim months to recognise at all - and something passed through those dark eyes.

"Yes."

**END**


End file.
